


For the Time Being

by aroncorsier



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: If you haven’t read my other stories yet you’re gonna be be confused so go do that first, Multi, Myrverth is back, Other, Switching Perspectives, general noncon, my typical writing style
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2020-05-31 09:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 29
Words: 65,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19423669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroncorsier/pseuds/aroncorsier
Summary: this is the fourth installment of a series of stories, Hotel California, When in Rome, and Carbon Dating (which you should definitely go try, just click on my name to go find em) I don’t have it labelled as part of a series because those other three stories can be enjoyed on their own, but this one kind of needs the background or nothing will make sense. My other stories are reader x undertaker with some plot and sexual tension, with a healthy side of violence.For those already invested in this universe who are joining me for the long-awaited fourth story, welcome back! Eli, Langdon, and London return, as Myrverth searches for a way to create the perfect soul and explores the rise and fall of its own species and its hatred for the ancient reaper, Undertaker. Meanwhile, our three mortals must find a way to stop the Antireaper or choose to join the cause. Who hates the Undertaker the most? Who’s the most deprived of love and attention? And even more importantly, who will the mortician rescue first?Welcome back to the world of science, sexual tension, bad jokes and epic fight scenes from switching perspectives. Enjoy guys!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> FOURTH STORY WOOT!!  
> Right away gonna tell y’all that the first chapter is an introduction to how the story is initiated, from Myrverth’s perspective. After that, it jumps to switching perspectives between the other three. Memoirs of a Mortician will be updated more frequently as well, and eventually the two timelines of this story and that one will align. So sorry if the beginning of this lacks the presence of the mortician, but if you’ve read the tags, you know that William might make an appearance. Trust me, the Undertaker will come back. No worries. Stick it out, there will be plenty of tense and humorous interactions between L,L&E. you should all know what you’re in for by now anyway! Enjoy!!

{...*I could... use these mortals. All of them were connected to him... perhaps, perhaps I could kill two birds with one stone here*...}  
Yes, yes! If I could find some way to kidnap (but for a more morally sound reason than the mortician had, obviously) London, Langdon, and Eli, I was sure I could utilize their knowledge of both the mortician and the afterlife—as well as humanity itself—to somehow create the first truly perfect human being.  
So.  
My amber eyes snapped open in the darkness. The green splotch of glowing energy in front of me was connected to three separate strings of film, glimmering and writhing slowly in the never ending blackness.  
Who should I start with? Perhaps I could take the academic, Eli, first, take some time to win them over. No doubt, their psychological knowledge would be the most useful in persuading the others.  
Or perhaps, I thought, analyzing the reels carefully and gently tracing each one with a sensitive tendril of smoke. Perhaps I should take the criminal, the violent one, the only one to seemingly have achieved physical power over the mortician; how, I was still not certain. This mortal could offer me protection whilst I hunted the others.  
That would be best, yes, as a safeguard. A warrior. Indeed.  
But how could I access this mortal? Langdon was perhaps the furthest isolated from me.  
Just as I began to conjure varying creative solutions to this issue, the film reel to my left exploded in agony. Whirling sharply, I nearly disoriented myself in my extensive library of souls. Something was going drastically wrong with London’s records, in contemporary time.  
Releasing Eli and Langdon’s reels, I focused my senses and attention on London’s, a sense of emergency thrumming through my consciousness as I pulled the green-etched memories close to my eyes. The reel flipped and squirmed relentlessly in my grip, wailing in distress. I grit my teeth.  
It did not take me long to figure out what was going wrong. Scanning the end of the memories, where the reels were beginning to split and fray, sharp chartreuse eyes glared into mine.  
Could the mortician really have snapped? Did he murder the mortal he seemed to so love?  
No, it was clear that this was another reaper.  
Dammit! How many of these—these bloody inconveniences!—was I going to have to deal with?!  
London had been speared through the stomach by a pair of garden shears, which I took to be a modern scythe.  
The dark-haired reaper drew back, and London’s vision slumped to the ground.  
I began to panic as the reel in my grip started to shatter and unwind.  
Acting quickly, I shut my eyes and exhaled slowly, dissolving my physical form and morphing into smoke, a smudge of colour amidst many others. Nothing to be seen; I slid into the reel, saturating the panel with my presence as I pulled myself through time and into reality.  
Dimly, I wondered if this is what Eli meant, by burning. Did I burn my way into the record?  
It did not matter.  
With sudden, animalistic ferocity, I reared up out of the mortal’s records, long black limbs bursting forth and striking the reaper in the chest, arms, and legs, immediately toppling him with my extreme strength.  
The shears were knocked from his grip seconds before they sliced through the stale reels of the pre-deceased mortal. Those sharp green eyes widened at me in fear and shock, and it was the single most satisfying sight I have been privileged with in... centuries.  
“MINE!” I screamed, for lack of a better expletive, and pinned the reaper to the ground, strangling him until he was unconscious.  
Well, that was hardly a fight.  
Shoulders heaving, I flinched when my feet touched solid ground. It was a strange sensation, prickly and heavy, very unlike the smooth vapours I usually hovered upon. The light here was blinding.  
I had been summoned into the mortal world a few times, particularly recently by Eli, however I still spent most of my time in my library. Not only that, but, summonings typically happened at night. The sun stabbed at me mercilessly. Holding my arm up over my eyes, I stood in the graveyard for a moment and stared at the reaper I had just conquered. As soon as his active mind had been shut down, the garden shears vanished from the grass.  
I gasped with each desperate breath and glanced down at my hand, strangely translucent in the sunlight.  
With strict concentration, I forced more colour to enter my flesh, solidifying my presence in the mortal world.  
Well.  
Spinning slowly, I stared at the human on the ground, eyes glassy and midsection split wide. At least this one didn’t bleed.  
The memories pulsed and spun around me, reaching for some sense of stability. They sensed it from me.  
New problem. I was now standing alone in the human world, with a dead mortal and an unconscious reaper.  
I could not kill the reaper. I did not know how; reapers themselves did not contain the same type of cinematic reel, if they retained a mortal soul at all. Yet I could not simply let him go. Surely, he would recall me, and report me back to his superiors or clan or whatever the hell these absolute cocks still had; and I could not permit that.  
I needed a place to put them.  
Taking a large breath, and nearly choking on it from lack of practise, I shut my eyes and half-receded into my library. Being in two places at once was, in fact, possible for my kind, but it was rather tiring.  
Forcing my mind to function, I pressed my hands together and pulled some strings of colour from the blackness. It was time to play a little God.  
The weaving took me about an hour, which was a micro-fraction of time, but still long enough for me to fret over whether the elder reaper may find me within that frame. Eventually, my skills paid off, and a grey bubble containing a haphazard mock world floated in front of me in the blackness of my library.  
Wrapping a tendril of smoke around the unconscious reaper, I unceremoniously chucked him through time into the smoky globe I had created. The bubble gathered him up and he vanished, a faint green smudge of a half-soul following him, safely secured within my time construct.  
Now for the human.  
Receding back to the world of light was difficult. None of my smoke wanted to obey me, seeking the comfort of the soft and squishy atmosphere of my little dimension. I managed, of course, and somewhat chaotically shoved all of the mortal’s reels back into their stomach, wrapping a tight layer of smoke... which was really just disintegrated time, by the way—difficult to explain—around them as a temporary suture.  
Pulling the mortal into the blackness with me, I shredded the time bridge that allowed me to connect with that world.  
With the reaper safely in the grey bubble, presumably still unconscious, I focused my attention on London.  
The human’s physical form fought existing in the chaos of the library. It shuddered and glitched, breaking many times as I actively attempted to patch up the soul. It was a frustrating process.  
The reels were damaged, torn and broken in some spots from coming into such close contact with death so many times. Desperately, I called colours up from the blackness and threaded them into the white sepia reels, wrapping them tightly and sewing each memory back into place. My own physical form dissociated.  
I was extremely out of practise with the weaving of souls, much less the repairing, and I cannot say that it was my finest work. The human looked like a raggedy voodoo doll, literal stitches glowing across portions of skin. Time threads, devoted to holding together London’s memories.  
I had very little time. No matter how much I utilized it, it was true that time was my master, not the other way around. This was extremely inconvenient.  
London’s body was on the verge of collapse by the time I forced the human into the cloudy marble. As soon as their form breached the surface of my world and was absorbed, I breathed a smoky sigh of relief.  
But this was not over yet.  
With a pang or nervousness, I turned back to face Eli and Langdon’s records, paranoid that now some new crisis may occur to either of them.  
Regarding Eli, I knew I merely had to wait until the next time they called me through Abel’s soul. I would likely need to be near the connection of their memories for that, and that was perfectly doable.  
Inspecting Langdon’s reels once more, and determining that there was no impending danger, I dragged myself down Eli’s memories.  
Unlike with London, I could not enter Eli’s memories yet. The human was not dead, and thus, the reels were not accessible.  
Instead, I aligned myself tightly with Abel’s reels, waiting for the mortal to call upon me.  
My patience was only tested another 7 hours. Such a time glanced through my mind like a blink, and then Abel’s calm and boring life was interrupted by a seizure as Eli came tearing through. I drifted in to greet them.  
Suddenly, something was different; Eli was panicked, and the interruption was chaotic and uncontrolled.  
I had been ready to appear in Abel’s world, but instead, I held back and stapled myself to the library, watching as Eli tumbled from panel to panel. This was unusual. Stalling, I carefully sensed for Eli’s memory, isolating the mortal. The mortician was behind them.  
Finally, they were fleeing!  
Why on earth had they decided to try and escape THROUGH time itself?! Honestly!!  
I leapt forwards, and let my hand drift into focus, in front of the human. White reels and flashes of turbulent colour surrounded us. I smiled as Eli’s wild eyes locked on me, finally noticing my presence.  
“There you are,” I crooned, long black limbs sprouting behind me.  
Eli glanced over their shoulder. Despite my confidence that I would remain shrouded in time, suddenly staring the mortician down from within the memories caused a spike of fear to stab at my chest.  
The mortal’s hand locked around mine. As soon as their flesh met my smoke, I ordered a tentacle forth, gripping the human tightly around the chest and pulling them to me, ripping them through time and into the library. To ensure that the reaper could not follow, I swallowed a moment of guilt and speared Abel’s soul through with a million different threads of time, shredding it and shattering it entirely as the more useful mortal’s unconscious body collapsed against me.  
Not wanting to risk damaging the vessel, I quelled the urge to hold the mortal longer, to study and interact with them, and instead banished their frail body into the world I had created, just for them. My desire for company would have to wait. Spacetime was not kind to mortals.  
Now, I could retrieve the criminal.  
The trick here was that Langdon had no ties to cinematic records. They had never come in contact with me, nor had they ever even seen a physical memory. They were very much isolated from me.  
So how was I to access them?  
I needed a portal, some kind of surface that I could hide the library behind. A building? But surely, slamming Langdon through a wall would damage them severely. Inconvenient weaknesses of a carbon organism.  
Hmmm.  
Something softer. What could I pull a human through?  
After an extensive and contemplative period of time drifted past me, during which I idly rewatched several panels of Langdon’s life, the idea struck me.  
Water!  
Of course! So I had to get Langdon to come close to water somehow. That could potentially prove difficult, considering the criminal’s... experiences.  
Through exploring my need of something to entice Langdon enough to bring them close to a substantial amount of water, I landed on a fountain. An old fountain in a London square; what kind of mortal could resist such mystery? Langdon had no reason to approach anything like a puddle or river.  
Very well, a fountain it was.  
I scrolled past the mortician several more times, tracing Langdon’s timeline and hunting for an opportunity to bounce in.  
There; the human was going for a walk, alone.  
Pulling threads of time up from the blackness, I manifested a fountain of smoke and water, hiding behind the glassy surface to wait.  
After a few moments, Langdon’s confused and curious visage blinked down at me.  
I grinned self-indulgently as the human reeled back, frightened by what they saw beneath the water.  
I readied my physical form and pushed up through the water, back into the light. The brightness of the mortal world hurt once again, but I was ready for it.  
Standing upright in the cold water of the fountain, I stretched and looked around, expecting to see the terrified mortal cowering on the ground.  
They were not there.  
I was greeted by an empty London street, grey and stoney and abandoned.  
With a scowl of frustration, I shut my eyes and sent out a pulse of black, sensing for their timeline.  
Ah.  
Clever human.  
Crouched under the fountain’s edge, Langdon was hiding from me, hand pressed over their mouth.  
Impatient now, I stepped confidently over the side of the fountain and bent at the waist.  
“I knew you would come,” I giggled triumphantly, grinning at Langdon’s petrified expression before sending a limb forwards to extract them.  
The criminal yelped once, but did not have time to unleash their prepared scream before I shoved them under the water and into the library.  
I followed the unconscious body closely, dismissing the fountain and allowing the threads of time to return to their natural positions. It was a relieving sensation. Nothing quite like the universe shifting back to normal to relax you.  
The criminal was sent into my makeshift world as well. It was the best I could do, given how... quickly I had leapt upon this opportunity.  
With reflection, it became apparent to me that I probably should have spent more time preparing. Unfortunately, the—INCONVENIENT—reaper that attacked London had stripped me of that luxury.  
Ugh.  
And now.  
I turned my attention to the green smear of light dancing in front of me.  
This reaper. This Undertaker.  
Somehow, I would pull this all off. Eli would be very useful... perhaps I could make a weapon out of the criminal, and use them to take the reaper down. London, meanwhile, was the perfect candidate for a little soul substitution.  
Eli to feed me, to convert useless souls of mortals into an edible stream of energy... London as a body, a host for a perfect soul, and Langdon as a weapon... somebody to tear a shinigami apart.  
I was perfectly certain, at this point, that all three of my tools were safe in the makeshift world. Even the presence of the reaper was no concern; he would be useless down there, undoubtedly far less powerful than the mortician.  
I was exhausted. After centuries of... essentially sleeping and watching, scowling and contemplating, this was a very eventful moment in time. Rest would do me wonders.  
Retreating further away from the orb, I withdrew into the blackness of my library and fully disassembled my body, allowing myself to become the ancient smoke that I possessed for an eternity, to sleep for just a short while longer.


	2. Chapter 2

“Oh...what the...fuck...” I groaned, pressing a hand to my forehead and blinking up at the iron grey sky.   
My bones felt... awful. Everything hurt. Where... where was I....  
Had I blacked out?  
Unlike the usual sensation of stones, I could sense cold grass beneath me. Although, my right shoulder was damp, as though it were resting in a puddle.   
Flattening my hands over my eyes, I forced myself to sit upright. I felt nauseous.   
I blinked.   
A... a field? Why was I in a field?   
What the hell was going on?  
A gasp rocked my chest as I suddenly recalled the creature in the fountain.   
Rocketing to my feet, I stumbled in a panic, frantic and dizzy. In my disorientation, my left boot sunk into a puddle of something. I glanced down, chest heaving in fear.   
Black ooze covered the lowest inch of my foot. Gazing about myself, I noticed more of this strange black liquid scattered across the grey field, seemingly at random. Puddles of the same weird smokey goo I had seen rolling off of the creature.   
Disgusted, I managed to wrench my boot free. The substance was sticky, but not in the way that honey was sticky. It was more like hands. Each drop of blackness was crawling, grasping. It made a violent tearing sound as my foot left its clutches.   
I shuddered and took a few hurried steps away, staring about myself in the field. To my right, the pale grass seemed to extend forever, empty vastness bordered by tall forests of ashy grey trees on either side. The colours of this place were muted, washed in greys, like the world was in twilight.   
Slowly, I turned my head left, my fear building up to the point where I wanted to vomit. The ominous silence tightened my breathing.   
In the distance, I could see what looked like a city, dim stone buildings propped up against the horizon.   
I decided to travel there. Obviously I could not simply stand and wait, and the emptiness of this field of bleached grass was unnerving; did nothing in this world have life?   
More importantly, what was this world? Was I dead?   
I touched my neck. Blood still pumped through it at a regular interval, and while that was indeed relieving, it only prompted more questions and less answers.   
Weaving my way around puddles, I set off at a good pace towards the city, hoping to find some sort of clarification, or even some company, within the civil population.   
Despite the isolation surrounding me, it was not loneliness that urged me to anxiously draw my knife, clutching it in my right fist as I fled the strange silence.   
This place was wrong.   
My neck prickled, the same way that it had when I slumped against the streetlamp in the dark with a broken rib years ago.   
Someone was watching me.


	3. Chapter 3

I was getting a little bit tired of waking up alone on unfamiliar stone.  
“If I ever make it back home, no one is ever going to fucking believe me on this absolute bullshit,” I growled, rubbing dirt out of my eye and blinking against the pale light. My entire body was sore.  
The last thing I remembered was... oh yeah. I was fleeing the Undertaker, and Myrverth grabbed me...  
So where was the demon thing? Where was I?  
Slowly sitting upright, I glanced around. Bleached lighting illuminated grey stone walls, and the cold and dusty floor upon which I was laying. Open windows with no frames or glass punched holes in the high walls, filtering in that pale sunlight and cold smoke. The entire world seemed washed out, as though somebody had forgotten to colour it in. It was more like a pencil sketch that had tea spilled on it; a weirdly bright dusk. My own pale skin stood out vibrantly by comparison.  
My left hand was stuck in a puddle of black. I recognized it as a strange liquid version of the black smoke that Myrverth seemed to ...exude.  
“Stupid...damn...demon...” I grit my teeth and pulled on my hand. To my horror, instead of just sliding loose, the liquid made a wretched sound of paper being torn. It felt and sounded like velcro, like each little particle had a million hooks and burrs. I recoiled and smeared my hand across the dusty floor, not caring that I rubbed it raw against the brick in an effort to rid my skin of the sticky goo.  
“Nasty!” I hissed, shaking my head and forcing myself to my feet unsteadily.  
I wandered over to a window. The stones were freezing against my bare feet, but it was something I was used to now. It simply felt like the morgue.  
Glancing out, the world looked much the same. I couldn’t see any human activity, although that didn’t mean there was none; seemed to be in some sort of ghostly city. Beyond the roof of a far building, a dark and looming forest waited.  
Withdrawing into the building, I paused and listened. No horses, no cars, no bugs, nothing.  
The silence was eerie. It made me creep around silently, anxiety nesting upon my shoulders.  
What should I do now? I supposed I shouldn’t wait. I had nothing, not even shoes; all I wore was the mortician’s robes, which seemed not nearly warm enough.  
I needed to find somebody else. Surely, there were other people, somewhere. Somebody would help me.  
I seemed to have awoken in a hallway, which rounded a corner to the right a few paces in front of me. I approached the corner with caution, every horror video game I had ever seen screaming at me that something was going to pop out at me.  
Chest tight, I glanced around the corner. The hallway continued, seemingly in a loop, but an open doorway that faced a street stood available a few metres down.  
I crossed the hall and leaned back against the far wall, sliding towards the doorway slowly.  
The only sound was my robes whispering against the stones as I moved.  
Despite keeping my eyes fixed on the doorway, I yelped in fright when somebody else sidled into view, a few feet in front of me as they appeared in the doorway.  
At first, I actually thought it was the Undertaker. The figure was taller than me, thin, and wearing long black robes. They even had the same type of scar across their face. But that’s where the similarities ended. The eyes that widened at me were hollow, suspicious and pale. The hair that framed the scratched face was dark, nearly black, choppy and shoulder-length. Then I registered the knife.  
At the sight of the double-edged blade clutched and ready in the stranger’s hand, I shrieked again and fell back, scrabbling along the stones for a grip before turning and darting away back down the hallway. I made it a whole two steps before I felt an arm wrap around my throat, dragging me back as the newcomer shoved me against the wall. The knife went to my throat, digging in hard, and the dark brows furrowed angrily above the narrowed eyes.  
“Who are you?!” The stranger demanded sharply, bony elbows digging into each of my shoulders as their entire bodyweight pinned me against the stone. I hardly bothered to fight; I had no chance.  
“Ngk!” I coughed, paralyzed. Something about this person was cold, unforgiving. The way the knife dug into my throat felt more oppressive than the mortician’s scythe ever had; one wrong step, and this human would surely kill me.  
My attacker’s piercing eyes narrowed further. “I am not patient.”  
British, like the Undertaker.  
Somehow, despite my panic, I managed to force my voice up out of my throat in a weak and high-pitched whisper.  
“E-E-Eli,” I gasped, fingers twitching against the cold wall behind me.  
“What are you doing here, Eli?” The stranger demanded.  
I pressed my eyes shut. “I-I don’t know! That sounds ridiculous but I—I mean, I just woke up, I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I am!—“  
My own panic lifted the pitch of my voice before the knife suddenly dropped away. As soon as the oppressive presence vanished, I collapsed to the floor and ran my palm comfortingly over my throat as I sucked in a breath. I was suddenly dizzy, adrenaline surging through me from the jumpscare of the intruder rounding the corner more so than from the near miss with the knife.  
The stranger crouched over me, still glaring icily. I put my arm up over my eyes. “G-get away,” I grit my teeth.  
“Listen here, kid,” the Briton hissed. “I am in no mood to play. I have no idea where I am, why I am here, or who you are. But outside of this building, there ain’t nothing but silence, okay? I really don’t feel good out there alone. So you’re gonna come with me, yeah?”  
Hesitantly, I peered at the scarred intruder. “Y-you’re asking me to... to go with you? W-where?”  
The stranger shrugged, losing some of their intense ferocity as their shoulders loosened. “I haven’t the faintest. I woke up in a field about four clicks that way,” they gestured with the knife over their shoulder. “I ‘aven’t even seen anybody else other than you in this entire city.”  
My eyes widened in relief. “S-so you’re the same? You believe me? Oh thank god,” I gasped, shifting up to sit against the wall. “So do you have any idea... where we are? How did you get here? And... you said there’s no other people?”  
The stranger’s brow furrowed. “Honestly, I’ve no idea. I was walking, when, uh... I sort of had a blackout. Then I woke up in the field,” they shrugged, pushing themselves up to their feet and proffering their hand to me. “And no, there seems to not be any others. What about you? You sound American,” they noted.  
With a shaky breath, I took the help offered. The hand was warm. Leaning back against the wall still, I shrugged as well. “Uh... yeah, well, I’m from Canada actually... but I was in London, and I was... I guess... running from someone, when I sort of tripped and... well, I also blacked out. I woke up here, right here on the floor.”  
“You were running from someone?” The scarred stranger inquired. I could not help but still see the violence within those shining eyes as they flickered up and down my body, not unlike the mortician’s in their aggression despite the stranger’s now placid demeanour.  
“I... yeah,” I offered weakly, glancing at the floor.  
The stranger’s eyebrow quirked, and then they stepped back. “I will not ask. Here, Eli, allow me to introduce myself.” They smiled half-heartedly, and the knife spun once in their hand before vanishing into the recesses of the robes they wore. The now empty hand was extended as the intruder bent at the waist. “My name is Doctor Vitae Mortem.”  
“That’s a mouthful,” I chuckled uneasily, shaking the hand gently.  
The stranger grinned and straightened. “Indeed. You are welcome to call me Langdon.”  
“Pleased to meet you, Langdon; at least, now that we’re, uh, done with the knife.”  
Langdon shrugged again, tall and lean form drifting away to the open doorway of the building. “Reactivity. I won’t apologize for it; it has saved my life many times, and may very well save yours in the future.”  
I watched with caution as the Brit leaned out of the doorway, glanced around like in some sort of spy movie, pulled a *different* and longer knife from their sleeve, and looked back at me.  
“Now, Eli, I’m going to keep moving, since at some point we need to find food, water, and secure shelter. These buildings have too many openings. I suggest you keep up,” they murmured, before dipping around the side of the doorway and disappearing into the ashy phantom world.  
I shook myself and jogged quickly to catch up, shuddering against the coolness of the outside air as I abandoned the building.  
“I also suggest that,” I muttered under my breath as I wrapped my arms around myself, hurrying to the side of the figure in black.  
Whatever the hell this person was, I wanted to be on their side.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sick so expect a rapid amount of updates lol

“Hey, so, uh, what’s the plan here?” I inquired, after walking silently side by side with the scarred stranger, Langdon. Their robes were not the same as mine; where mine were loose and thick, Langdon’s seemed haphazardly dyed and sewn, made of light and tighter material. There were slits from the knees down to allow for running room, met with short black boots that came to points.  
“Plan?” The Brit scoffed. “I’ve no idea. I’m trying to find someplace to stay, some kind of shelter or tools. I’ve been scavenging buildings. So far, we seem to be in a dead zone,” they added, pausing to glance into another darkened open doorway. “This world seems strange. I don’t know if night ever falls. I see no sun, only light.”  
“Uh,” I shuddered and glanced at the concrete sky. “I feel like we should definitely find somewhere to stay and maybe have a fire, especially if night does fall.”  
Langdon glanced at me. “So what do you think is more dangerous at night, Eli? The forest, or the city?”  
“I would imagine... the forest,” I offered nervously. “Predatory animals, etcetera... natural areas seem dangerous at night. It gets cold, and nocturnal animals don’t vibe well with humans...”  
“Your logic is correct, but fundamentally flawed,” Langdon offered politely, casually flipping the long blade around in their fingers as they scanned the street in front of us.  
I glanced over my shoulder. Nothing but pale stones, dust, and black goo. “O-oh?”  
“We are in an established city,” Langdon replied. “Yet is is empty. There are houses; there were people, or the potential for people. There seems to be nothing actively forcing the population away, right now, other than what, maybe some goo? Yet the city sits abandoned. So, something comes through at regular intervals to threaten any life that exists here. Potentially, at night.”  
My eyebrows lifted appreciatively. “Clever, Langdon. But this observation is not based on anything concrete. There are no people, but there are also no corpses. There is nothing to suggest violence or threat of any kind, except for this unnerving silence. It suggests that this city has remained completely untouched for... centuries,” I argued, unable to let my scientific debating go overshadowed.  
“Mm,” Langdon agreed, pausing to pick up a stone off the ground. A firm, black-clad arm crossed my chest to stop me from walking before the stone was thrown forwards, sailing through the air before clattering to the ground about twenty metres ahead of us.  
We waited, my eyes wide and Langdon’s narrowed.  
Nothing happened.  
After only more silence, Langdon resumed pace, boots clicking softly on the street, dodging around or striding over puddles of ooze. My bare feet were careful in finding smooth stones, trying my hardest not to slip into pools of smoke.  
“So then, companion,” Langdon began again, turning to casually bat at my shoulder. “What is the best compromise between our theories?”  
I thought for a moment. “I think that we stay in the city, on the edge of the forest. Find a high place. We can take shifts for sleeping; if we hear something coming through the city at night, we flee to hide in the forest. If we hear nothing, including no noises from the forest, then we know it’s safe to travel there with no predators. Animals make noise, and so far, I’ve heard none,” I offered, subconsciously stepping towards the stranger. No matter how unnerving Langdon’s appearance may be, it was infinitely better to be with them than to face the silence alone.  
Langdon shrugged. “Very well. Let us scout for a good location, then. You suggest..?”  
“Somewhere high,” I repeated, looking skyward. Most buildings only seemed two stories. “What’s the highest building you know?”  
“Church tower,” Langdon replied immediately. “Let us find one.”  
Black robes whipped about them as the Brit spun erratically, sprinting to the nearest building. Startled by the sudden movement, I leapt back and clutched my chest.  
Langdon was apparently a ninja, as their boot found a home on the edge of one of the window openings. Kicking up off the window, their other foot slid once across the smooth stone of the side of the building, propelling then upwards just enough for their long and thin hands to clasp the edge of the window on the second story and haul themself up. My mouth dropped open.  
“How did you—?!”  
“Practise,” Langdon replied, grinning down at me before repeating the process to jump onto the flat roof of the building. “You’re not the only person to ever have to flee a situation.”  
“Ah,” I replied, somewhat nervously as I glanced around at myself. The street seemed much colder and much bigger without Langdon next to me, and I shrivelled up against the wall.  
“Try.”  
I looked back up. “There is absolutely no way I can climb a building,” I replied, fully resolute in that conclusion. “I can barely climb a rope!”  
“You don’t have to climb a rope,” the stranger replied, sliding down off the roof and crouching in the first window before dropping back to the ground in a crouch.  
I winced and ran forwards, hands feeling soft and useless as I placed them against Langdon’s tense and weathered shoulders.  
“Good god, your ankles must hate you,” I observed.  
“Come on, I will help you,” Langdon urged, sliding their dagger back into their sleeve.  
My eyes widened and darted back to the dusty and hazy building. “What? No, no—I can’t,” I laughed humourlessly. “I’m good. I’ll leave the parkour to you—“  
“Par-core? Pfa, spoiled American. Come on, I’ll help you, baby.”  
“Do not—“  
Langdon’s fingers wrapped around my wrists, dragging me up to the window.  
“Just get to the second-story window and drop. You need to practise, especially if we’re going to be getting up to a church tower.”  
“Even if I make it that high, there’s no way I’m going to just drop!” I shrieked, pressing myself back, only to be met by the stranger’s chest. I looked up to the window. Way too high.  
“I’ll catch you,” Langdon’s voice in my ear offered, and there was no small amount of condescension.  
I grit my teeth. “Fine. Shut up. How do I do this?”  
“You saw me,” Langdon replied, sounding rather pleased with themself. “You have to jump hard, and then put your foot against the wall and kick. Right away. It’s faster than you think. Reach up and just catch the edge. Just hang there, you’ll be alright.”  
“Shut up! Gah, get back, let me go—“  
The stranger’s presence vanished.  
I glared at the ground and took a deep breath. Whatever it took to keep this stranger happy, I was willing. Even if I got injured, it was probably worth it, to not get in some sort of altercation with this bizarre character.  
Continuously doubting myself, I balanced my foot on the cold edge of the first window, raised my arms, and leapt. I tried to lift my other leg the way I had seen Langdon do, and I actually managed to barely plant my foot above the first window and kick.  
Unfortunately, I kicked away from the wall. My hands had no chance at grasping the edge. My stomach dropped as I started to fall, and though I was only a few feet in the air, I couldn’t get my feet underneath myself. I was doomed to an awkward and painful landing.  
I didn’t even touch the ground.  
Langdon’s wiry arms secured themselves tightly around my shoulders and we swung around, the stranger twisting to account for my momentum. Their sternum dug into my back as I clutched at their wrists for dear life, and we quickly came to a standstill, Langdon holding me a few inches above the stones, laughing as they slowly set me down.  
“I did not think you would try. I am impressed,” they murmured. There was something scratchy about their voice, but not in the same high pitch as the Undertaker’s—it sounded more like stones tumbling down a ramp superimposed on a warm and childish tone. Like it had been damaged from smoking or something at a young age, rather than a natural gravel.  
“Y-y-you what?” I stammered, pulling out of their grip and stumbling a few steps away, into the street, narrowly missing a puddle of goo.  
“I didn’t think you would try. Thank you for trusting me,” Langdon smirked, thin lips pulling back. “But do indeed leave the building-jumping to me. There is a church, this way,” they offered, pointing down the road to the right. I turned to face them, still confused. They were just... what, testing me? Curious?  
“Okay—whatever,” I sighed frustratedly. “But also, frankly, do you eat enough? You are skeletal!” I jibed, pushing my hand against the front of their ribcage.  
Langdon’s icy eyes widened sharply and they stumbled back, and the palm of my hand was met with the sharp tip of a knife before I could breathe.  
I stared at them, not daring to move in the tense silence, the edge of the blade digging into the first layer of my skin.  
“Careful,” Langdon hissed, hollow features glaring at me. “We are not at the point where you touch me yet.”  
I swallowed nervously and nodded, arm still lifted by the dagger against my hand.  
Langdon’s narrow crystal gaze shifted to my palm. Somehow, they flipped the knife and urged my arm to turn palm-up with the flat side of the blade, tracing the white raised scar that started in the centre of my hand and disappeared under the sleeve of my robe. “What’s this from?” They murmured, eyes flickering between the scar and my clothing with suspicion.  
Breath shaking, I swallowed again and hardened my gaze. “W-what’s yours from?”  
Langdon met my eyes with surprise, before tossing their head back and laughing. “Which one?” They grinned. “I’m covered.”  
“How about we drop the topic, and get back to it when we know each other a little better?” I offered, trying to convey my sincerity.  
The knife tip slid into my sleeve. The cold metal made me flinch back, but fear of being cut trapped me in my place on the street as Langdon stepped forwards, gazing down at me observantly as they dragged my long and loose sleeve up all the way to my shoulder with the knife, the edge of the dagger following the trail of my scar.  
Langdon’s pale eyes flashed with concern the further they exposed the white line.  
“Did somebody... cut you open?” They whispered, gaze locking on mine with aggressive questioning. They were all I could see, jagged black hair framing the hollow eyes that bored into mine.  
“Uh—no, I screwed up in an experiment of sorts, and got sliced up pretty badly,” I offered, mouth feeling dry.  
“What kind of experiment?” Langdon’s low voice pressed.  
“I don’t like being so close—“  
“I was tortured,” the stranger offered, a dark smile dancing across their mouth as they stepped back and let my sleeve fall. “I was cut, with a hot knife. I have more scars than just this one,” they laughed, and the knife tip went to their own face, where a sunken-in scar bisected their features, from up above their left eye, across their slightly hooked nose, and down their right cheek. Unlike the mortician’s, the trail seemed to skip portions of skin, as though the blade were slashed across in a hurry rather than intentionally cutting in.  
“Malnourished,” I murmured softly, distracted by my observations. “Your whole life?”  
Langdon’s brow furrowed. “You can tell?”  
“Atrophic scarring,” I murmured, lifting a hand to touch the indent on Langdon’s face, but the sharp eyes glinting dangerously as they followed my fingertips reminded me of the consequences.  
“S-Sorry,” I offered, dropping my hand and stepping back. I jumped when my shoulders touched the cold stone wall.  
Langdon chuckled and flipped the knife around in their hand once, blade flashing in the bleached light.  
“Come on,” they chided. “Let’s go find that church.”


	5. Chapter 5

The church was tall. My anxious academic friend waited nervously on the ground while I scaled the great grey building. I would check out the bell tower, determine if it was safe for sleeping, and then ensure that there was a more secure way up for little Eli through the building.  
Nothing eventful occurred. I could feel my muscles straining to pull my weight up onto the last ledge of the tower, and I rolled, landing on my back facing up into the giant bronze bell. It sat still, with no wind to urge it to sing.  
There was no trapdoor. Ideal, for security; less ideal for getting Eli’s frail arse up here. I glanced down to Eli from over the top, about 30 feet down.  
“Aye, guess what, maple sucker? You’re gonna have to jump from the window!”  
Eli’s face crunched up. “Maple sucker?” They muttered, but shook it off quickly. “What do you mean? What window?”  
I laughed. “This one!”  
With that, I gripped the edge of the roof and slid off, kicking back and swinging down. As planned, my legs flipped into the first window, a small opening about two feet across and three feet tall. I heard Eli gasp sharply and chuckled again, my scarred hands landing flat on the dusty floor inside the building. My left knee sank into a puddle of ooze.  
“Awe fuck!” I grumbled.  
“You alright?!” Eli shouted up.  
“Fine, fine, just dumb,” I replied, pulling the grasping liquid off of myself and starting down the narrow spiral staircase. It was built like a castle, which meant I had the upper hand—literally, by hand. My knife was a useful tool and should anybody be ascending, their fighting hand would likely be blocked by the wall, as they were forced to move in a clockwise direction.  
Not that I expected anyone.  
“Well, that was boring,” I pouted, reaching the conclusion of the stairs and facing Eli through the open doorway. It was strangely medieval, this entire place. It seemed the only material to be found was stone.  
“Come on,” I urged.  
“You look creepy, standing in the dark like that,” Eli cringed.  
I cackled and made a face, holding my hands up like claws above my head. “cOmE viTH mE cHilD, I ViL ZshOw yOu Ze WaY!!” I wailed, in a horrible voice that was something between a German accent and what I pictured a goblin to sound like. Grimm Brothers style. I couldn’t help but grin at my own foolery as Eli shook their head, short fair hair flipping back and forth before they scurried into the building towards me.  
Walking back up the tower with the Canadian attached to my shadow, I instructed Eli to stay and watch how careful I was as I crouched on the edge of the window.  
“Now,” I murmured sonorously, turning back and bracing my arms against either side of the stone window edge. “There’s no wind to knock you off your stable, y’hear? If you fall, it’s of your own stupidity, which hopefully, is perfectly avoidable.”  
“Encouraging,” Eli snapped, observant eyes wide with panic as they watched me.  
“Oh hush,” I admonished, bending my long and narrow frame to lean out of the window. “I’m going to be up there, and you’re going to jump and I’m going to catch you.”  
“I’m probably heavier than you, you damn skeleton, so we’ll both fall,” Eli argued.  
“Nah, shh, nah,” I snickered. The child knew nothing of what I could take. “You’ll be fine.”  
“What if you don’t catch me?”  
“I did it once,” I sighed, leaping up into the light and letting my fingertips naturally hook on the edge of the roof as my feet fell free of the window. “I can—rrrgh—do it again,” I grunted, pulling myself up over the edge. Flattening myself on my stomach, I readied my arms over the edge, hooking one of my feet around a corner post that met the upper roof structure above the bell. “Come on!”  
“Fuck this!”  
“Get your arse up ‘ere, you wimp,” I commanded.  
“Fuck you too, mate!”  
“Mate?” I chuckled to myself and looked out at the horizon. I could see the entire city, as well as the field beyond, where I had woken up. I had made good distance in a few hours. “You sure you ain’t British, maple sucker?”  
“I think I’ve sucked enough maple to know that I’m Canadian, thank you,” Eli hissed, and their long black robes spilled out over the edge of the window.  
I took a deep breath and shook my arms as Eli’s dinner-plate eyes glanced up at me. “You’re going to catch me, right?”  
“Yes,” I snapped. “I’m going to bloody catch you! Just jump and aim for my hands.”  
Soon enough, Eli’s frigid flesh wrapped around my fingers, tightening in a panic. Tensing my abdomen and curling my arms, I dragged the Canadian up onto the roof with me.  
Eli was shaking, but did their best to hide it as they collapsed forwards onto me, both of us tumbling back to lie beneath the bell. They smelled like pine wood, and fear. A familiar scent.  
“Sorry, sorry—“ Eli panicked further, scrabbling to get up off of me. Reeling away, they smacked the back of their head off the edge of the giant bronze bell. It hummed a low note as Eli swore, pressing their forehead against my sternum, hands over their skull in agony.  
I chuckled and let my hands stay out to the sides to not spook the stranger. “That might be the first time anyone has rung that bell in decades, or maybe ever, and you did it by bangin your noggin against it,” I coughed. “Well done.”  
“Shut...up...” Eli groaned, head clearly still ringing louder than the bell.  
I laughed again.  
What a convenience, finding this person. I felt lucky to have found any sort of human contact, and although Eli didn’t appear to be my typical choice of company, they were certainly better than being alone in the eternal silence.  
Although. I was unnerved by the stranger’s clothing. Perhaps it was simply coincidence that the Canadian was wearing nothing except for robes that were *extremely* similar to the mortician’s, but when I saw that my company had scars, I couldn’t help but hypothesize. The long-healed wounds across my own palms, arms, midsection, and face, not to mention the crookedness of my right hand, reminded me constantly of what the... whatever he was... was capable of.  
“You speak a fair amount of British lingo for a Canadian, eh, *mate*?” I teased.  
“I took a break,” Eli groaned back. “I transferred to England for school. That’s why I’ve developed this weird half-accent, which is close enough to how most of the world perceives Canadians anyway... it was easier to just blend in, fake it a little. Fuck, I hit that thing really hard,” Eli muttered, lifting their head and glancing up with angry watering eyes.  
“You did,” I sympathized.  
Said eyes locked on mine, and Eli’s brain seemed to short-circuit.  
I smiled reassuringly and placed the thin metal glasses frames back on the student’s face. “Don’t worry, I caught these too. Now, any time you want to get off, dearie.”  
Eli blinked. “Right, right!...”  
Careful to avoid the giant bell above us this time, Eli slid to the side, legs shifting off of mine as they flopped to lie on their back, adjusting their glasses habitually.  
We breathed in the silence for a few moments. Eli’s eyes fluttered shut while I stared at the giant and rusted clapper of the bronze bell above me. It clearly had not been rung in...forever. It didn’t seem like it could move. The old rope that wound its way down into the tower was blackened with time, but not frayed with use. Had the bell ever made a sound?  
...Before Eli koncked their skull against it?  
Sigh.  
I pressed the calloused heels of my palms against my eyes.  
The mortician.  
To my knowledge, the Undertaker was still with Ethan. How much time had passed?  
I worried vaguely for my children. Hopefully, the Undertaker had mellowed enough to not attack minors just on a whim, but Ethan could also be unpredictably temperamental.  
“You’re tense,” Eli murmured.  
I hadn’t realized I had been holding my breath.  
Releasing another long sigh, I slowly opened my eyes to the bleak and dusty light.  
“I have... children,” I offered. “And I don’t know what has happened to them since I left.”  
“Left how? You mean, since you were... brought here?” Eli inquired softly, slowly sitting up inside the bell.  
Shrugging my shoulders, I pushed myself up to face the Canadian in the shadows. “Indeed. But I trust the oldest. I just...”  
Eli nodded in understanding, eyes locked on me with sympathy. “Of course. You can’t help but worry.”  
I smiled weakly. Shaking myself, I sharpened my gaze against the academic. “Whatever. It seems I have a new child to worry for, aye, maple sucker?”  
Eli’s face crunched up in dismissal. “I’m not a child,” they riposted, tapping the clapper of the bell hanging between us idly. “This thing sure looks old, hey?”  
“It does, it does,” I agreed, eyes not leaving the Canadian’s face even as they nervously glanced away from me.  
After a few more moments of tense silence, I tapped Eli’s bare toe with my boot.  
“You a street rat?” I asked. “Run out of money for school or sumn?”  
Eli grimaced. “Uh... touchy situation. Although, it’s just a little bit too cold here to be comfortable,” they mumbled, skillfully redirecting the conversation.  
“Tiny bit,” I agreed amicably, withdrawing my flask of whiskey from within my inner breast pocket before tossing it to my companion. “This will warm you up.”  
The Canadian caught the flask with wide eyes. “Is there anything you don’t keep in those things?”  
“Something useful, apparently,” I shook my head. “Like flint or water... although, I didn’t exactly expect to be randomly kidnapped and dumped into this ridiculous situation.”  
“Tell me about it,” Eli grumbled, taking a long pull from the flask before coughing once and handing it back.  
I couldn’t help but notice the pink tinge already blossoming on their cheeks. “Lightweight?” I snickered.  
“Whiskey is strong, it caught me off guard,” Eli argued, waving their slender hand in front of their face.  
“Here,” I offered, taking a comforting sip of my own before holding the burning liquid back out to the littler of us. “Finish it.”  
“Oh god, why,” Eli grumbled, eyeing the inside of the flask through the narrow opening before tipping it back.  
I smiled, amused. “It will take the edge off of the cold.”  
The shadow of the bell seemed to be longer, leaning to one side. Realizing this, I glanced sharply at the sky as the Canadian took another pull. The horizon above the forest was bruised. To my right, over the field, the clouds were a brighter orange. There was a sun after all.  
“That’s west,” I pointed to the field. “The sun is setting over there. This sky is just extremely cloudy, or I guess, maybe smoky?”  
“The atmosphere is being blocked by something.”  
“Whatever that means,” I rolled my eyes and watched with a modicum of hilarity as Eli took four strong gulps and finished the flask, pressing their forehead to their knee and holding the empty container out with a wince.  
“Ugh, I haven’t even eaten anything in like, two days,” they growled. “And dare I ask why you want to get me drunk?”  
“It will take the edge off the cold,” I repeated, snickering evilly as I tucked the empty flask into my robes again. “I don’t want to have to deal with your complaining all night, maple sucker.”  
“I might throw up.”  
“Uh, I recommend not, as you’ll lose all liquids and I don’t know when we’re going to find water next,” I elaborated, glancing over the precipice of the tower with raised eyebrows. “But if you do, do it over the edge.”  
“How many ounces was that?”  
“Ounces?” I murmured incredulously, feeling at the edges of the flask through my clothing. “I don’t know what an ounce looks like, so your guess is as good as mine.”  
“Fuck,” Eli groaned. “Alcohol dehydrates.”  
“Well, pick your poison, maple sucker,” I threw my hands in the air despairingly. “Be cold, or be thirsty when you wake up. Either way you’re not going to die.”  
“I hate my life.”  
The rosy pink tint of Eli’s cheeks darkened and spread to their lips. This creature before me, I found them intriguing; never had I met someone so soft of flesh but steel of mind. Typically, people came in either one category or the other. Squishy, weak, and spoiled, or starved, tough, and scared of everyone.  
And while my companion wasn’t fat, it was true that they were squishy; their arms and legs were soft, and jiggled and bruised as a rich person’s might, simply on a smaller scale. Slender but squishy; it stemmed from their lack of strength, I imagined. They could jump maybe half as high as me, and lift perhaps half as much. Not a physical marvel by any means. But though they seemed untouched by life’s hardships, Eli’s glassy eyes were quiet and determined. They had not complained about the cold until I had prompted them to; although, I suppose that was to be expected from a Canadian.  
I maintained high hopes that Eli hid a much larger character than their body suggested.  
“Stop staring at me,” Eli snapped, half-heartedly covering their own gaze with twitchy fingers.  
Interesting. I tilted my head and grinned. “Make me.”  
Eli glanced up sharply. “What?”  
“Make me,” I offered, spreading my arms wide. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”  
The Canadian lifted an eyebrow. “You’ve got nothing better to do than stare at me?”  
“I meant fight, but yes, that’s true as well.”  
“What makes you think I would have to fight you to make you stop looking at me?”  
I hesitated curiously. “You believe there is another way?”  
“There is always another way than fighting,” Eli insisted with a suddenly conniving smile. “Mind games, things like that.”  
I tossed my head back and laughed, running my hand through my hair. “You will find that I am immune to your ...mind games,” I scoffed. “I’ve been through enough to know when I’m being played with.”  
“Want to make a bet?” Eli offered, before smacking themself in the forehead. “No, bad Eli! No more gambling!”  
I was puzzled by the behaviour. “...sorry?”  
“Don’t worry about it. Here, let’s try some, and see if you really are as impervious as you think.”  
“Impervious,” I muttered, having never heard the word before. “Very well, I accept your challenge. Try me,” I spread my hands again before leaning forwards and clasping them over my knee. Our shadows continued to lean out over the tower, ever longer.  
“Just think of the last person you fell in love with,” Eli propositioned, nearly slurring a word as the alcohol hit them.  
Despite being surprised by the idea, I forced my eye contact to remain still. “Fell in love with how?”  
I could not recall such a person. I loved Ethan, and had a rather arguable passion for the mortician, but “fell in love with”... I had never had the time.  
“Well, that didn’t work,” Eli mumbled, dejected. “Usually people will immediately lose themself in the pleasantly embarrassing thought for a moment, and glance away.”  
I shrugged my shoulders victoriously. “Imper...vious,” I said slowly.  
Eli seemed to forget where they were for a moment. Lifting my eyebrows, I chuckled. “You really are an easy drunk, ain’t ya?”  
“Depends what you mean by easy,” Eli snipped.  
I laughed again. I could not remember the last time I had laughed this much. “Perhaps we will find out later, hm?”  
Eli hiccuped and lifted their nervous fingers, forming a Catholic cross against me. “Back, demon!”  
“Relax,” I waved a dismissive hand. “I’m not the same as some people you may know.”  
Eli flapped a long black sleeve at me, snapping it through the air with extreme force. As it cracked before my face, I flinched and lifted my hands to grab it, eyes flickering shut instinctively.  
“I win,” Eli chuckled, before flopping down on their back. “...alcohol makes me sleepy.”  
“Sleep,” I encouraged softly, glancing out over the field. The night settled easily on my shoulders. “I will watch.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am settling into uni. Holy crap so much is going on.   
> I have not bloody abandoned this story, not at all. Here’s a quick chapter update, not as long as I’d like but hopefully good enough! We will keep moving more regularly.

“I’m hungover.”  
“You didn’t ‘ave enough to drink, then.”  
Eli’s curious face crunched up. “Uhh, no,” they replied, holding up a finger. “I feel like it’s the other way around...”  
“You talk so funny,” I muttered under my breath. “Bizarre person.”  
Pressing a hand to the side of their head, Eli grimaced and slowly sat up. “Whatever. What are we doing today?”  
I glanced to the side, pausing in my efforts of trimming my nails with my knife. I hadn’t slept. “You say it so casually,” I chuckled. “I believe today we enter the forest, yes? Unless you have a better idea.”  
Eli sighed and rolled their head back and forth across their shoulders, stretching their neck. “I mean, I really would like some shoes, but I don’t know how we’re going to accomplish that, so I suppose I’ll just have to make do.”  
“Indeed,” I agreed, scowling in thought. “I will keep my eyes out for anything we could use. Luckily, there seems to be no glass or sharp stones on the ground.”  
“But for traipsing through a forest?” Eli pointed out, looking rather defeated. “I’m afraid I will need something.”  
“You can use mine—“  
“I’d rather have you with full fighting ability, since I’m as vicious and as skilled as an overcooked noodle,” Eli hiccuped, waving dismissively. “I’ll just shut up and be alright.”  
“I can carry you,” I offered. “Over any prickly parts.”  
Eli smiled, eyes still glazed with sleep. “Sure thing, pal. Do you not think, Langdon, that it may be a good idea to sort of... set up base camp here? Try and make a door, bar some windows, something like that? This is a pretty advantageous spot, isn’t it?” They suggested, the tone of scientific theorizing lacing their words.   
I blinked, gently touching one of many knives within my sleeve out of habit. “...yes,” I said slowly. “I suppose you’re right. I don’t know where we are to get a door, though, or with what we are to make one. There seem to be no materials.”  
“We have only seen a tiny fraction of the town,” Eli offered. “In fact, the more I talk about this, the more of a feeling I get that we ought to search the city. There’s got to be something here,” they began muttering under their breath, reaching for their glasses and sliding them up onto the bridge of their nose. “These frickin... monoliths... surely can’t mean nothing. What do you think this world is, Langdon?”  
Here we went again. I was not meant for all of this philosophy, truly. I felt lost. Shrugging helplessly, I glanced down at the dusty, pale ground, vaguely reminiscent of London’s cobblestone streets, and thought of the creature.   
“It seems like some...body... tried to build a world—“  
“—from scratch,” Eli concluded, nodding happily. “It all seems *just* wrong enough that... well, it seems clear to me that this doesn’t look like any place on Earth, but more like, every place on Earth. Surely, we must be on the outskirts of the effort. If we localize our search to the centre of the city, I imagine things will begin to appear more and more normal,” they continued, drawing some sort of abstract map that only they could see with their finger in the air before blinking up at me. “And if not, I have no idea what the hell is going on.”  
“Even if you’re right, I still don’t,” I huffed, crossing my arms and yawning, falling back a few steps.   
I waited until Eli glanced away to allow my vision to scour their body very quickly.   
I was almost dead certain.   
That I had seen those exact robes before.   
But what could the mortician have to do with any of this? I had no idea what Eli meant about this fake world business... hopefully, they were not leading me into a trap. 

~

Langdon and I wove our way through the city of silence, chatting amicably to escape from it as my companion occasionally glanced at the sky. Still impossible to tell where the sun was during the day.  
I felt very firm in my predictions. I still was not sure why Langdon was here with me, or what the hell kind of life they had led to result in the scarred warrior at my side, but this world definitely felt...fake. Like a mockery. And obviously, Myrverth had something to do with it.   
I also still was not sure if the ghost(?) was malevolent or not. They had saved me from the mortician, but now suddenly I was stuck in this strange world, which was covered in smoke and goo. I *also* had zero inkling as to what the ooze could be made of. So far, it was just that. Black ooze.   
“Oi,” Langdon snapped, brushing my shoulder with theirs intentionally. I jerked out of my thoughts and glanced up at them. “Would you quit sulking?”  
“I’m *not* sulking,” I emphasized. “I’m thinking. You should try it sometime, you might like it.”  
“Well that was mean,” Langdon chuckled. “Either way, cut it out and look around. You were right,” they released a low whistle. “We’re starting to get materials.”  
“I do not trust that at all,” I laughed uneasily, following Langdon’s gesture to an ancient-looking bronze metal pot with handles sitting on its side further down the road.   
“Excellent,” Langdon murmured. “That’s where I come in.”  
Before I could stop them, Langdon jogged ahead of me, slowing just a few feet before the pot.   
“Langdon!” I hissed, and they held up a scarred palm in silence as they carefully picked their way nearer, crouching in front of the opening of the vase-thing.   
“Nothing is in it,” they concluded, straightening up and nudging the pot with the toe of their boot. “It’s empty.”  
“Great! That doesn’t mean—“ I cut myself off as I slapped my hand to my face in exasperation as Langdon stepped on the lip of the pot and kicked it up into their hands. The jarring scraping sound it made against the stones unnerved me.   
Langdon’s dark eyebrows creased. “How bizarre,” they muttered quickly, tilting the jar back and forth in their hands.   
“What?”   
“There seems to be... markings,” Langdon murmured, suddenly looking uneasily at me.   
“Markings? What kind of markings?” I inquired, and Langdon swallowed before tilting it my way. As their hands allowed to pot to slide, a sudden black trail left behind by their fingers streaking across the bronze caused both of us to jump back.  
“What the—“ Langdon was cut off as the pot began to disintegrate, bubbling with black ooze around their hands and losing its structure.   
“Drop it!!” I shrieked, lunging forwards and hitting their arms to knock the pot out of their grip.   
With a noise of disgust, Langdon dropped the artifact, shaking black goo off their hands with a flick. We stood and watched as the pot dissolved and melted into a new puddle.   
My eyes widened slowly. “Oh no...” I spun on my heel and gazed around in repulsion at the numerous puddles on the ground. The one we had just made somehow was much much smaller than the others, about the size a melted pot would be.  
“Please do not tell me... that all of those... were *things*?” Langdon whispered slowly, following my gaze.   
The first question sprung to my mind instantly. “What if they were alive? Are they still? And... what made them like this? How did—why did it crumble?” I bent over and rubbed my temples, confused beyond belief.   
With a quiet retch that I hid from Langdon, I shakily adjusted my glasses and spun again. “Okay. Alright. Onwards. Let’s find clothes so we can get the hell out of this place.”  
“What if the clothes melt?” Langdon proposed, jogging to match my pace.   
I shook my head. “Hopefully they don’t. If they do, maybe we can figure out why. Let’s just find some, shall we?”


	7. Chapter 7

I had been awake for...ever. Eternally conscious. Unable to move, unable to speak, unable to see, except for occasional flashes of colour in which I could see myself before my eyes, hovering in darkness with missing pieces and glowing strings wrapped around me.  
Somebody help me...  
Somebody save me...  
I was hardly aware enough to wonder how I had gotten there. I couldn’t remember much... except... ugh, every memory I felt crawled in my head, feeling wrong and trapped and panicked. What was my name?  
I had flashes of a life that didn’t feel like mine. I was at a subway station; then the next second, I didn’t understand what a subway station was. Didn’t look right. The lines were all wrong?  
Fire was a recurring theme, but every time I tried to remember, a flash of pain wracked my body and silenced my efforts.   
Somebody, please, tell me what’s going on?


	8. Chapter 8

“What were the markings on the pot?” I inquired, breaking silence once more between Langdon and I.  
“Erm, just, I don’t know, letters of some sort—“  
“English letters?”  
Langdon hesitated “Mm-hm.”  
“What did it say?”  
“Uh—I don’t know. It melted before I could read them,” they offered quickly.  
“Oh. Alright,” I frowned, wondering what kind of ancient Babylonian pot had English letters on it.  
Suddenly, a loud growling noise rippled across the world, shaking the earth. Langdon and I jumped collectively. Immediately, the ashy sky was dragged downwards, spiralling in a huge violent storm on the horizon. It was like a tornado realized it was late. Winds picked up around us, scattering dust and rocks and hurtling them around the buildings. The ground began to shake harder.  
“Jesus Christ!” I shrieked above the noise, hair whipping about my face as I tried to keep my balance. “What the hell is happening?! Langdon!”  
I had lost track of my companion in the overwhelming thunder as the storm above the city darkened. Just then I felt something grab the back of my collar, and Langdon dragged me off into a building pushing us up to the wall behind the doorframe and leaning against me, shielding their own face from stones with their arm up against the brickwork.  
Langdon’s sense of balance is the only thing that kept us upright. Both of us leaned out around the doorframe slightly, Langdon’s pale grey eyes wide and shining as we witnessed the storm.  
The now swirling blackened sky, lit with lightning, suddenly plunged towards the earth. A blast echoed as a building somewhere was destroyed, brickwork shattering upwards as the sky split open. I felt Langdon flinch and turn back as a ring of dust suddenly swept the streets in front of us, pelting the building with sand as we stood, shielded by a narrow piece of wall.  
Then it was over.  
The world returned to silence, and the winds died down. All that was to be heard was mine and Langdon’s breathing, harsh and laboured with adrenaline.  
“What the fuck,” I gasped, sliding out from between Langdon’s chest and the wall, taking several shaky steps out the door and half expecting the cobblestones to swallow me.  
“Eli...” Langdon called warily, following slowly and glancing around. They lowered their voice. “Something in the town has changed. We don’t know what it is. I...I think we should leave.”  
“Fine, fine,” I agreed, in a shaky whisper. “Forest it is. Lead the way.”

We fled through the city, moving quickly and quietly. Langdon took me by the wrist and encouraged me to keep up with them, which was, by all means, and impossible task. But I was still full of adrenaline. Watching those clouds come together before being shredded had given me a renewed sense of urgency; if something had fallen from the sky, even my scientific curiosity couldn’t convince me to go find out what it was.  
My feet were long numb. I didn’t have time to worry about rocks or stones or anything else I stepped on, and my mind went into a state of acceptance; or ultimate denial. I wasn’t sure which was more likely at this point.  
“Langdon, we’ve got to slow down,” I coughed eventually, as we finally neared the edge of the city. The monolithic buildings around us became less and less distinct, the streets overgrown and coated with more ooze than before. Like the efforts were less concentrated, less focused at the edges of the city.  
“Look at the sky,” Langdon snapped back. “It’s still a different colour. We need to get the hell away from this place.”  
The world was indeed less yellow, more blue. The dustiness was cold and grainy; wintery rather than western.  
“I can’t breathe,” I gasped.  
Langdon smirked, slowing slightly but dragging me along nonetheless. “Not a runner?”  
“Fuck no. Studier,” I coughed, stumbling and forcing my legs to keep carrying me. “Give me a desk and back pain any day over exercise.”  
The ground flew past us, rocks and stones and ooze giving way to moss and forest detritus before I even noticed the shadows of the trees that were soon above me.  
Yanking my arm free of Langdon’s grip, I paused, chest heaving as I glared around at the alien surroundings. We had vanished into the trees, far from the city. The earth beneath my feet was colder and squishier. Staring off into the eerie darkness of the forest, monochromatic trees standing stiffly on guard, I realized why I had not felt the shifting shadows as we entered. There were none. With no clear source of light, the forest had no distinct dark spots. The trees were grey; the world was flat. It was like staring at a painting, with enough details to be real, but no... depth.  
“It’s bizarre,” I gasped, babbling to myself whilst placing my palms on my cheeks, feeling the heat from my pumping blood. “How important shadows are, I feel like they’re underra—Oof!!”  
The breath I had just barely caught was knocked from my chest as my shoulder blades were slammed against the earth.  
“What the Hell, Langdon!” I shrieked, instinctively shoving them off of me. Langdon’s hips fell across mine as we scuffled on the ground, sharp knees driving my hands against the dirt and pinning them there.  
I froze, staring up into angry grey lasers. My heart stammered with fear, memories of my first interactions with the mortician flooding back, the sensation of being stuck on my back unfortunately familiar. Luckily, Langdon’s raven hair was not long enough to strangle me the same way. “L-Langdon—what are you doing?”  
The eyes hovering above me narrowed. The sound of a blade sliding open made my heart sink, before it was pressed lightly against the side of my neck.  
“L-L-Langdon?”  
Lips barely moving, Langdon hissed a clipped reply;  
“Tell me where you got those robes.”  
I was barely able to comprehend the situation, praying I wasn’t going to get sliced. “W-what?”  
“Since I’ve got you pinned under me already, allow me to be perfectly clear,” Langdon offered, leaning back and raising their dark eyebrows with a melancholic expression. “I already *know* where you got those robes. The man whose robes you’re wearing, however, is the man who cut.me.up. So, keep in mind that whether I walk away from this with a clean knife depends on how you got into those robes,” they murmured slowly. “So I would start talking, and talking carefully.”  
Against the knife, my voice made some sort of half-hearted squeak of terror. The blade scratched dangerously at my skin as I swallowed. “Fuck, Langdon, I’m so sorry he did that to you,” I gasped, glancing with renewed horror at the scar across their face and trying not to think about all the scratchy bits of mulch and moss were digging into my back.  
Langdon waited, face impassive. I swallowed again. “W-well, I was...he k—uh—“ it was strangely difficult to say the words, now that someone was waiting for them. I kept my voice slow and quiet. “He...took...me...from my home,” I offered. “And he...held me, in the basement of the morgue, in chains, and—and—th-th-threatened to...rape...me, if I didn’t help him.” I took a shaky breath and closed my eyes, Langdon’s palm still firmly against my shoulder and the blade still hovering against my throat. “He...wanted me...to help him bring the dead back to life, because I’m a scientist. I’m not sure why, but he took my clothes, and I’ve been stuck in various incarnations of his robes throughout the entire time.”  
“Did you not try and escape?”  
“I did,” I nodded slightly. “I did try. He set...a trap, and...I was forced...into a coffin, until he returned for me.”  
“What happened then?”  
The memories seemed so long ago, so alien and bizarre. “He...hit me against the desk, and gave me internal bleeding, and...tossed me to his—our—his—experiments, to see what would happen. That’s how I got—“  
“The scars,” Langdon offered quietly. The blade remained poised. “I imagine there are scars further down your body.”  
I nodded slowly again. “Mm-hm.”  
“How did you escape?”  
I scowled. This was the unbelievable part. “Uh... well it sounds absurd, Langdon, but in my experimenting with souls, I met... a ghost, I suppose, and the ghost... pulled me out, out of reality...or something... and I woke up here. For all I know,” I continued, voice lifting slightly. “I could still be there. You could be a figment of my imagination, locked in a torture-coma.”  
I attempted a shrug, shoulders shifting against the ground uncomfortably due to my hands being trapped. “I guess I just have to wait and see.”  
“And how did you get this, specifically?” The knife dropped from my neck, and I opened my eyes in relief as Langdon used the blade to casually tap my arm, where my scar from my hand to my shoulder lay hidden by the black sleeve of the robes.  
“Oh—those experiments, they liked the smell of blood,” I explained. “I cut my hand while I was attacking the Undertaker with...I think a teacup.”  
Langdon’s eyes widened sharply as they jerked back. “You attacked the mortician with a teacup?” They demanded sharply.  
“And a shoe, I believe,” I coughed unsurely, rubbing my throat and cracking my fingers as Langdon pushed themselves off of me. “I hit him with a shoe. Several times. In the dark.”  
Langdon burst out laughing and proffered a hand as I propped myself up on my elbow. “Well damn, maple sucker, maybe you’ve got a few more tricks than I realized in that hat rack.”  
Glancing at the scar across the palm in front of me, I placed my hand in Langdon’s grip and allowed them to haul me to my feet, now tired from running and from being so tensed beneath the Brit.  
“Shall we keep walking?” Langdon offered.  
“We won’t have to walk for long,” I noted, raising one eyebrow rather suspiciously, staring off into the forest as I lowered my voice to a whisper.  
Langdon’s hackles rose as they scanned the forest quickly in the direction I was looking. “Mm?”  
“There,” I whispered, pointing at a puddle of ooze further into the forest, nearly out of view. “Do you... do you see the face?”  
Saying the words aloud spooked me, increasing the creepy factor of the forest tenfold. Langdon’s eyes seemed like they couldn’t get any wider. Or any more aggressive. The look reminded me of a dog, about to bite out of fear.  
“What?”  
“Look in the puddle,” I whispered, tears of panic welling up as I latched onto Langdon’s arm. “Look in the puddle down there. There’s a freaking face!!”  
Langdon stayed poised and silent for a moment, staring hard where I had directed.  
“It’s not in the puddle,” they hissed suddenly. The silence was suffocatingly fragile now. We had to be oh, so quiet. “It’s behind the tree next to the puddle. It’s a reflection.”  
“I’m gonna lose my goddamn mind,” I whimpered. “This is a nightmare! What the fuck’s behind the tree?! Is it a person?”  
“It looks like it,” Langdon murmured. “At least, the face is vaguely person-shaped.” Another knife was withdrawn from somewhere in the robes. “But I don’t know why they’re just...waiting there. They should have heard us by now.”  
“What do we do??” I whispered, hardly daring to blink. I felt paralyzed.  
Langdon took a long breath in through their nose. The shoulder I was clinging to was squared and the neck attached was cracked once, adding vicious intent to Langdon’s already intimidating pose. “We go introduce ourselves.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you guys miss the mortician? I missed the mortician ;)

I spent hours. Trying. To put the crystals back together.  
My eyes burned with tears; for the second time in all of my long life, I was losing someone I loved. The pain felt too familiar. It was bitter, a reminder of the rawness of the first time. What a fragile world this was.  
Had I become fragile?  
As I wondered this, I stared into a crystal, a petrified shard of memory. A man with Christmas eyes stared back, defeated, and exhausted, lost.  
The sudden oppressive silence of the shop was terrifying, giving a voice to my failures, to everything I had ever done wrong leading up to this point.  
I did not even understand where Eli may have gone. Why had they been so attracted to the memories? Was some sort of spell cast upon them?  
The crystal dropped from my fingers.  
Maybe if I laid here long enough, I would go numb, and die.  
All these years it had seemed I never could; I did not know if it was due to chance, or to my lack of conviction. Each time a reaper had come after me at some point, I had a reason to fight, something to drag me back up into this world that I did not truly feel at home in, and then, when everything went quiet, and I craved what those who slept on my tables had fought so desperately... no one came. No one cared; no one wanted me dead. It was inconvenient. People only found me worthy of killing when I had something worth living for.  
What was to come next? I did not understand where Eli had gone... did I want to try and hunt? Where to start? Was it my moral duty to attempt to bring Eli back?  
The manner in which the scientist had been acting leading up to their vanishing concerned me. It seemed to me that Eli had become obsessed with the memories, and whatever lay in them; I could see it, whenever Eli interacted with a burnt section of reel. I had never encountered those before. I had had no time to warn them. I still did not know what they were.  
I slammed my palm against the cement ground. Crystals shook and shattered, billowing outwards in a wave away from me from the force. My voice felt too dead to scream. I hit the floor again; my hand went numb from the contact, and a crack appeared in the ground. 

A certain number of days flew by. I slowly roused myself from the concrete, and dragged myself up the stairs. That seemed to take at least two out of the days, and another two to will myself to move inch by inch until I reached my desk, and pulled myself up into my chair to sit and think.  
Mostly, I sulked.  
The days continued to stretch out, silent and grey. My hair grew dull as dust settled on each strand slowly. A pocket watch somewhere in the desk could finally be heard, in the deafening stillness, until it too unwound itself and died.  
I did not move. I did not breathe, I did not sleep, although I should have. Maybe if I forced myself to stay awake for years, I could be dropped into a recovery coma and perish.  
And then suddenly, a very bombastic knocking at the door rang through the shop.  
My nerves were too deadened by the grief for me to be startled.  
I almost did not respond, just based on the effort required to potentially drag my lips apart. Every chord of my voice box was scratchy with misuse.  
“...Come in.”  
The door handle twisted rather hesitantly, and fire cautiously stepped into the room, already talking.  
“...alright, Undertaker? You’ve never not opened the door for me—“ the voice stopped short as green eyes locked on me and went wide with shock and worry.  
Grelle took several slow steps into the silence, the door falling gently shut behind them as they glanced around. “...oh god... what happened to you?” They whispered, fingertips resting lightly against their lips in horror.  
I understood what they saw. I was a mess; hair uncombed, I was dirty and dishevelled and had some healed-over scratches from the crystals, I’m sure. Bags under my eyes, probably, and I just sat there and waited, waited for nothing with my fingers steepled in front of my face and my elbows on my desk in my sleep robe, creased and covered in floor dust.  
And I just sat there. Glaring. Waiting.  
“Undertaker,” Grelle murmured again, slowly approaching desk. “What happened to you? You look miserable!”  
“Grelle,” I sighed, putting my hand up to my eyes and leaning on my desk further. “Why are you here?”  
“Wha—I just thought I would come visit you,” Grelle whispered, sounding offended. “It’s not as though I never do, Undertaker.”  
“I would have thought I scared you off for good last time,” I growled. “It would appear I was wrong.”  
“I’m stronger than that,” Grelle huffed and stepped up to the desk, dropping into a crouch to be able to look into my eyes beneath my hand. “What the hell has happened to you?”  
I could sense the shame creeping in, but it was quickly warded off by exhaustion. I was underdressed and a mess but who cared. Not me.  
I looked at Grelle, at the immaculate makeup, perfectly combed bright red hair, lovely green eyes.  
Something snapped and died inside of me as I realized that no matter how presentable Grelle was, and how weak I appeared, I was still the predator. I was the apex; the strongest, most powerful between us, and it would always be that way. It was that way with anyone.  
I was a beast, and all I could do was kill.  
I laid my head down on my arm, flat on the desk, turning away.  
“Get away, Grelle,” I sighed and closed my eyes. “Now is not the time to be friends.”  
“I...w...you’re just... what?” Grelle whispered softly.  
“No one is friends with a bomb that is about to detonate,” I warned quietly. “I suggest you leave.”  
A hand fell upon my shoulder. I decided that I would at least be decent and make tea, if Grelle insisted on staying, and rose from my chair, not caring to adjust the hair that fell over my shoulder chaotically. The hand jerked back. Grelle suddenly stumbled away from me, looking petrified; the redhead’s haste was so great that they hit a casket and fell over it, scooting back along the floor before collapsing into their elbows with their wide eyes locked on me, chest heaving. It was so sudden it caused me to flinch.  
“Grelle! What on earth are you doing?!” I snapped.  
“I—I thought you were going to attack me!” Grelle whispered shakily.  
I stared for a moment, at the thin legs in red heels, bent against me, the scarlet coat and crimson hair streaked through the dust on the floor. I looked away before I could glance their eyes.  
“Get up,” I sighed. “I am making tea.”  
Disappearing into the kitchen, I lit the stove, placed the kettle over the heat, burned myself slightly, and sat heavily into one of the iron chairs at the small table nearby.  
Grelle cautiously followed, stepping through the silence to stand next to me, looking down.  
Suddenly, a paralyzingly vivid flashback drowned me, and I was small, mortal, and blonde, staring up at myself standing in Grelle’s place. The reaper me held my jaw tightly in his grip, forcing me to focus on him.  
I looked so... cold.  
I jerked back, as Eli had, out of my grip, and I was facing Grelle again. My chest was suddenly heaving.  
“Undertaker? Oi!” Grelle yelped, crouching in front of me, hands resting just above my knees carefully. “What’s happening? What’s gotten into you?”  
I was feeling out of control, like I was losing my body. I was breathing, panting, rapidly, more rapidly than I had consented to, and I felt a desperate craving to breathe more, to gasp harder. I needed more air, more air!  
And then I was crying again. Slowly, I collapsed sideways onto my arms on the table, my already red-rimmed eyes stinging as more tears ripped free of my control and bled into my sleeve.  
Distantly I sensed Grelle’s grip on my legs tighten as they leaned closer.  
“Undertaker!”  
My chest. It hurt so much. Part of my mind fractured off, and for a moment, all I could think of was how badly I wanted to knock the litter reaper away, kick them to the floor and tear them in half with my bare hands. What was the point of even trying to be a good person if everybody left me anyway?!  
I breathed out.  
“Grelle,” I moaned against the table. “You have...people, Grelle. I do not—expect you to understand how—this feels,” I gasped, the physical agony from my mind distracting my thoughts. “You could never know, what it might be like, to be alone for a thousand years.”  
“Undertaker,” Grelle murmured sadly, a hand gently dragging through my hair. “Of course I do... what are you talking about?”  
I could hear the tear-stained tones.  
I grit my teeth. “You have people, Grelle! You always have! You’ve always had a friend, a muse, a partner, someone to fall back on! How many times have you had that ripped away from you, Grelle?! Angela died, once! And that was your own god-damn fault!” I wailed, eyes still buried in my sleeve.  
“I don’t understand—“  
My voice rose in hysteria, and I reared back, gesturing wildly. “I have done bad things! I am a bad man, certainly! But what could I have done, Grelle?!” I took hold of their face as carefully as I could manage, staring wildly into their eyes, searching for answers. “What could I have done to deserve this pain?! What could I have done?! I just wanted it to end from the beginning! WHY DOES IT HURT SO MUCH—“ I shrieked, doubling over, coughing once and clutching my stomach.  
I slapped Grelle’s hand away when they reached out again. Not to aggress; I could not comprehend how I might react to being touched right now. “Not you!” I snapped, some voiceless demon beginning to wail alongside me. “You have ALWAYS had someone! You had Angela! You have your encounters with the demon! You have your reaper cluster! You’ve got Ronald, and William, and Othello—and whoever the hell you want—“ I could barely hear myself over the screaming that was echoing through the room that was neither mine nor Grelle, and the redhead cut me off by grabbing my shoulders with a confused look. “Who’s William?” They demanded quietly.  
I blinked in surprise. Had I gotten the name wrong?  
After a second of staring, I couldn’t stand the screaming walls anymore and I snapped my eyes shut, shook my head, and for lack of anything else to do, tried to conjure my scythe. The unleashing of my power felt cathartic, time itself racing through my veins. In my chaos I missed and my scythe went spinning off into the corner, nearly biting into the wall but vanishing into ashes as it made contact instead.  
Something in me needed to destroy the screaming. I didn’t know where it was coming from or what it was, but I was putting an end to the overwhelming pitch of panic, and I sent a bolt of pure green energy out to hunt it down.  
Moments later, the cast-iron kettle on the stovetop exploded.  
The screaming stopped.  
Still panting, I stood before Grelle, who looked on in terror.  
A moment of blissful silence passed. “Sorry,” I rasped. “Let me make more water. Tea will be a few minutes late.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are about to get exciting; by the way, I have not forgotten the other ideas for short side stories that were offered to me, including sick day, snow day, and D&D— all of those have not been forgotten and have works in the making. I’ve got all the stats for all the characters of D&D I think it includes Grelle, William, Undertaker, Sebastian¿, Langdon, London, Eli, and... idk. But those ones I’m p sure. Anyways.   
> Enjoy <3

Ah yes. The face in the puddle.  
My only true fear was that this creature may be supernatural; if it was human, I could cut it, tear it down, wound it, kill it. If it was some sort of daemon, I would not be able to defend myself, much less the... well, rather physically useless scientist.  
At this point, I was debating protecting the scientist at all, but the doubt was short-lived... Eli’s story was convincing, and sounded like something the Undertaker would do. Still, I remained wary, though now at least I had confirmation of things I had already suspected.   
The face in the puddle.   
It looked vaguely like a person, though it was difficult to tell from this distance— it was distorted, and had a strangely purple glow to it, shining back at us from the pool of murk that lay twenty yards ahead.  
“Stay there,” I advised Eli quietly.   
“W-what? Why can’t I come? I don’t like being left alone here—“  
“I can run twenty yards in five seconds,” I called back, picking up a jog. “Can you say the same? Just stay here until I call you to me.”  
The scientist grumbled something about not being a dog, but stayed put.   
Turning my attention to the new challenge, I felt adrenaline of an impending fight beginning to course through my veins. This was all extremely familiar, although by this point I had not eaten in days and was not feeling my exact best.   
Regardless.   
I pulled up my mask, hooked it around my ears and arranged four knives handle-to-handle in pairs in my hands so that a blade protruded from each side of both fists. Breaking off to the right, I slowly approached the tree.   
What I saw behind it melted my mind for a few seconds.   
It looked like a human, standing almost completely still, in the centre of a larger black puddle that had not been visible from the other side of the tree— but strange, glowing white ropes attached to their body were stuck in the ooze. The person did not seem perturbed; although, they didn’t seem like anything at all, but rather were occasionally drifting, being pulled back and forth in a stable position as these weird rope things fought to be pulled in or out of the puddle. Like a puppet.   
I slowly approached, making sure to make as much noise as I could while far away to ensure it wouldn’t trigger anything as I drifted near. The forest was still dramatically silent; the tension was palpable.   
Finally, I grew close enough to understand details.  
“...Film reels?” I wondered aloud. Having only seen those once or twice before, I was rather unsure.   
The person had long, dark hair; not black like mine, but dark with coppery tones. They were built a bit more like Eli than myself; fleshy, soft, and looked...warm. I got a comfortable feeling from them. However, the reels completely unnerved me. What were they? Had this person been impaled? Was it a person?   
All of the questions caused extreme unease in me.  
Slowly, I continued to circle, walking around to the right so that the stranger was always in my view.   
I exhaled a sigh of relief I had not realized I had been holding. The features were human. Stress levels quickly rose again, however. The person’s mouth was firmly closed, jaw muscles visibly contracting and relaxing slightly in some sort of pulsing rhythm. The dark eyes were open but empty, glassy and wide, and fogged. Their skin seemed a sickly shade.   
I stood and stared for a few moments before slowly lifting my hand up to the eyes. Every nerve was on high alert as o shook it back and forth lightly. The body remained still.   
“Eli,” I called, not daring to blink or look away with this corpse being so close. “Come have a look.”  
Quick and nearly silent footsteps approached from my right, creeping up behind me. A small hand gripped my right arm lightly out of comfort as Eli peeked over my shoulder at the thing. I allowed the contact a pass in this situation.   
“I find it strange that they are standing,” I murmured quietly.   
The scientist’s voice was a sharp whisper in my ear. “THAT’s what’s strange to you in all this?”  
“Do you know what those white ropes are?” I inquired.   
Eli sighed. “Actually, unfortunately yes. They’re... mm, how do I say this... they’re memories, Langdon, so they’re records of what this person has seen and done in their life. A reaper must have tried to kill them... look there, in the centre of the stomach,” Eli’s hand appeared in my vision as it pointed. “A wound. Small, strangely enough. It wasn’t the Undertaker’s scythe...”  
Although the scientist seemed to be talking more to themself now, the last sentence hit me like a ton of bricks. Right. That was... that was confirmation, of a truth I had been avoiding.   
The man was a bloody Grim Reaper.   
Fuck, me.   
I stared at the eyes of the corpse.   
As if my mind was not already close enough to the edge, the features of the face suddenly clicked into place, and I... I almost recognized the person. I felt a very... very distant memory trying to dredge its way to the surface, and I just could not quite reach it.   
Suddenly I felt lightheaded. It was all too much, and the stress was too high. I was in danger of passing out.   
I swayed slightly and grabbed onto Eli’s hand, covering it with my own as I found stability and shook myself. I could do this.   
“...looks like they’re stuck,” Eli finished, having been talking the entire time.   
“They’re stuck?” I breathed, focusing on pulling air in and out of my chest. “H-how so?”  
“Look,” Eli added. “They’re trying to pull themselves out of the—oh my god, Langdon,” they suddenly gasped.   
“What? What?” I demanded, the emergency in the scientist’s voice making me nervous.   
“I know this person!” Eli nearly shrieked, leaning out further from behind my shoulder. I glanced down at them and scowled.   
“So do I. From where do you know them?”  
Finally breaking away from me, Eli moved to stand slightly closer, crystal eyes sweeping up and down the corpse. “From... a dream. They... they pulled me from a car with a bomb in it.”  
“Car? Like a train car?”  
“Carriage, sorry. I was stuck in it.”  
“How—how do you get stuck in a carriage?”  
“The seatbelt,” Eli replied distractedly. “It wouldn’t unlock.”  
I blinked a few times. “Seat-belt...” I imagined a seat cushion wrapped around someone’s waist. Perhaps that is how the richer citizens existed... what luxury, to have so much seat that you could wrap it around your waist.  
“I know them too,” I offered, refocusing on the moment. “But... I cannot remember from where. Perhaps a dream as well,” I suggested. “But that seems quite unlikely.”  
“Either way, what are we going to do about this? They’re clearly uncomfortable. Do you think it’s worth freeing them?” Eli asked quietly, curling up against my side.   
I stayed silent, deep in thought for a few moments. “In this dream,” I offered. “They saved you from some sort of destruction?”  
Eli nodded, looking uncomfortable. “But... I mean, perhaps we should consider more logical, realistic risk factors. Dreams kind of don’t matter.”  
“On the contrary,” I chuckled in return. “Dreams cannot simply be purposeless in a world that relies entirely on belief. Let us free the poor soul. They look like they’re in pain. And who knows, they’re probably dead anyway, and we will have freed a body, and we can bury it and move on.”  
I reached forwards.   
“No!” Eli shrieked, jumping on my arm and pulling me back. “Don’t touch them!”  
Out of reaction, I kicked the scientist’s knees out from under them and landed on top of their hips, two blades pressed beneath their throat. Eli cried out and I quickly dropped the knives, grabbing the blonde’s shoulders and pulling them to their feet in a hug. “Sorry, sorry bout that—why did you say no?” I asked, bending to retrieve my blade.   
“I’ve touched those things before,” Eli explained, shaken. “Uh—it takes you into a different world. Let...” they took a deep breath. “Let me do it. Just please, trust me on this one, Langdon, please. I need you to stand here, and keep guard. I’ll try and touch them as little as possible, but what’s going to happen is that when I catch one, I will go completely still. It will seem like I am unmovable. I don’t know for how long, alright? The longest it’s ever been was a few days, but it shouldn’t be more than a few minutes. I’ll pull myself back out as quickly as I can, I promise.”  
I just stared and shrugged. “Whatever, maple-sucker, I’m best at keeping watch. You do whatever you need to do—I’ll be here,” I nodded, stepping away to sit myself against the tree. Being so close to the corpse was unnerving, but it was somewhat mitigated by Eli’s presence.   
The scientist seemed surprised at my willingness, and bit their lip anxiously as they shuffled within arm’s distance of those empty dead eyes.   
Then they turned to me. “P-please don’t leave me here,” they whispered, sounding on the edge of tears.   
I smiled and closed my eyes for a moment. “I will not.”  
Eli’s head of fair hair hung for a moment, depressed and nervous. Then they squared their shoulders. The reels next to me shivered and tried to shy away as the Canadian moved closer.   
With another deep, shaking breath, Eli squeezed their eyes shut and grit their teeth.   
“No time like the present,” they muttered, before their hand shot forwards.   
I watched with interest as it connected with a reel. All of them began to move faster—only slightly, as they were still impeded by the ooze, but there was definitely an increase of effort.   
Eli’s fingers grazed the surface. Before I had time to register it, almost upon contact, the scientist’s entire body went lax, like they had fallen asleep standing up, with their hand out. Their mouth snapped shut, and their eyelids fell open until their eyes went glassy.   
Suddenly, there were two corpses next to me.   
The silence was much more unnerving this way. I pulled my knees closer to my chest, eyes scanning the trees, and fingers anxiously caressing the edges of my knives.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sidenote, y’all remember when I just decided to kill London at the end of the first story? Man I had no idea any of this was going to be this big a thing when I started. I literally saw a gif about Bill Nye and was like, “yeah, I could write a story about that”.   
> Oh boy.

Every memory was so tempting. I had to be so cautious, so careful to not invade as much as I could. There was a flash of a parent’s face. I pulled back out of the memory, my fingers releasing the reel of film after dragging it up out of the murk. Langdon sat stiffly by the tree at my feet, glancing around. I never wanted to take breaks, so I reached for the next one. The sooner this was over, the better.   
A flash of myself on a bike.   
Then, I looked at a cell phone, and reeled back for a moment, taking time in the memory to tap the touchscreen.   
So this person was from my time...?  
Shaking the questions out of my head, I withdrew before I became to encumbered by the past and let the next reel float away.   
A dog. A park. A car crash.   
I was more than halfway finished. An interview. A new apartment. A bow tie.   
Then, something green and completely unexpected flashed before my face.   
I shrieked and fell back, dragging the memory out of the ooze as I hit the dirt. Rolling once, I flipped my hair back and stared at Langdon from my knees. The Brit jumped, jaw tensing and eyes widening as they stared back. “You alright?”  
Shakily, I nodded, glancing back at the memories. “I...I think I’m starting to see a pattern, Langdon,” I whispered.   
Langdon tilted their head.   
“The... mortician,” I murmured. “This person knows him as well.”  
“Wot?! How?” Langdon demanded, befuddled, eyes fixating sharply on the drifting body. Looking for wounds.   
“Let...me...just...see,” I replied slowly, crawling back towards the reels and grabbing the next one.   
I felt the familiar hunger in my stomach. I never wanted to not be doing this.   
I was dragged back in, and I was on the pavement outside, with him staring down. I flinched instinctively. The expression he wore, though, was unfamiliar. It was much softer than I had usually seen, and I took a moment to study his face. Something about him seemed different. Lines below his eyes were missing.   
“London?”   
London?  
The words were foggy and garbled.   
“What are you doing here?”  
What are you doing here?  
“London?”  
London?  
“I’m...waiting for the bus.”  
I’m waiting for the bus.   
The bus to my apartment.   
I shook my head and reared back, desperately dragging myself out of the memory. I had been distracted by the Undertaker.   
“Holy fuck,” I hissed, planting my feet on the forest floor and repeating my name to myself before grabbing the next memory.   
I opened my eyes just in time to see a burning beam fall on top of me.   
I screamed and ripped the memory out of the ooze, tossing it away from me vehemently.  
Then I was in the shop again.   
My heart twisted, with something like nostalgia. Despite the shop containing negative emotions for me, it was still... it was what life was, before this disaster. There was a sense of safety in that the mortician was in control of everything. It was a fortress. A fortress of misery is still a fortress. Part of me longed for the ways of the past; my own past, for once.  
I was weeping against the mortician’s chest.   
Then he was kissing me.   
I did not want to feel his hands any more, and discarded the memory with a shudder.   
The next one. I needed the next one.   
My throat tightened and my tongue glued itself unpleasantly to the top of my mouth. Pulling my hands up to my chest, I held the bowtie carefully, as though it may protect me. I had to trust the Undertaker. I had to.   
Wait. ‘The’ bowtie? Which one?  
I took a deep breath and stepped around the wall, the three footsteps I took clicking loudly on the floor.   
The two reapers spun on their heels at the same time. Grelle, the redhead, nearly let his glasses slide off his face in the process. William reflexively whipped his scythe, the shears, around in his hand.   
Before he even gripped them again, the Undertaker’s own death scythe was in the way, the curving blade wrapping around William as the mortician lurked just behind the raven reaper.   
“You might want to watch where you point those,” the Undertaker hissed.   
“William? Grelle? Who are you?” I demanded suddenly, panic rising in my chest.   
Tumbling back out of the memory, I shook my head. Distantly, I felt the forest floor beneath my knees, and a bead of sweat dripped off the front of my nose. Clenching my jaw, I ground the palms of my hands against my eyes before covering my head with my arms and laying my forehead against the cold earth.   
“You alright?”  
“It’s—it’s so strange,” I rasped. “Suddenly knowing things you were never meant to know— just by pretending to be someone else.” I glanced up sharply, hands curling into my chest as I laughed. “It’s so easy, Langdon. It’s so easy. Okay,” I coughed once and ran my fingers through my hair shakily, composing my wits before reaching for the next reel.   
He stepped away from me, head bent low and shoulders and hands shaking. Then he stopped, and up from the green mists of time a scythe appeared. My veins flooded with ice, as the thought occurred to me that he might just reap me here and now, get it over with, finish the job—  
He stepped forwards and slashed the blade through the air. The curved metal sang as it whipped around in his hands, and his robes fluttered at his feet, flooding the floor of the shop with blinding green light. The breeze produced by the force with which he swung the weapon shifted my hair. Ducking my head back towards my chest, I threw my arms up again just in time to hear the targeted coffin shatter upon impact. Splinters of wood rained through the air, sent backwards by the pure force behind the blow. I flinched as another casket broke, crying harder as shrapnel littered the floor around me.  
Ah yes. I knew this sensation. This was familiar. My cheek against the cement, the fear of the mortician gripping my heart like talons ripping through my ribcage.   
Then the world was silent for a few moments, other than his breathing and my weeping. I could hear his voice dragging through each breath, something that had never happened before.   
I forced myself to lie completely still as the clicking footsteps made their way back towards me.   
Hearing the mortician sigh from above, I flinched again and cowered away when I felt him tap my side lightly with the toe of his boot.   
“M’dear,” he hummed softly.   
Peeking through cracks in my fingers, I noticed the hand hovering above me. Slowly, I uncurled myself and wiped at my eyes. I took the proffered hand and unsteadily pulled myself to my feet. Swaying slightly, I stumbled into his grip and clung to his robes, eyes dry but wide and lips and hands trembling. He placed a reassuring hand on the small of my back.   
I froze up. His face seemed so much younger, the hand at my back warmer and softer than I could ever recall.   
I shoved back, but suddenly could not force my body to move. I was experiencing a dissociative moment; I tried to make my muscles obey me again.   
Suddenly, as though finally breaking free of a nightmare, I clawed my way out of the memory and landed flat on my back in the grey forest.  
If Langdon said anything, I ignored them. I was too focused. I roused my shoulders, kicked my legs, and reached forwards once more.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahaaa, two updates in one day baby, tricked y’all. Btw does it tell you guys what all is new vs stuff you’ve read or should I say things like “both chapter 12 and 13 are new today” if I update more than once a day?

The uneasy silence was spread thinner and thinner, feeling on the verge of shattering itself by the time the scientist fell back out of the white ropes. Another one floated free.  
“How is that going?” I murmured hesitantly, as the Canadian took a moment to lie on their side, panting slightly.  
A frail hand pulled bangs back from their eyes. “I—fine, it’s... it’s going fine.” Eli gasped, crawling forwards.  
“Take a moment,” I commanded quietly, holding up my palm to catch their attention. “Come talk to me for a few minutes.” A gnarly feeling about this process was gnawing at my stomach.  
Eli shook their head, eyes wide and fixed on the white snakes. “I don’t...I don’t want to, Langdon, I’m almost done...”  
I did not understand what I was afraid of. But, my instincts were not to be overridden easily, and the scientist was acting strangely, so I did the natural thing and rolled directly between the Canadian and their target.  
Suddenly, Eli became manic, and I had to stop myself from accidentally stabbing them with my knives, as that was not my intention. I quickly flipped them so that the blades were all tucked up against my palms carefully and braced my hands against their frail shoulders as Eli shrieked and tried to push past me, reaching desperately for the memories.  
“Eli!” I cried. “What the fuck, mate!! Relax!”  
Thankfully, it only took this moment, and Eli’s crystal eyes cleared and settled on my face. Expression shocked, and ashamed, they jerked back.  
“Oh, Langdon, I’m—I’m so sorry—“  
As they pulled back from me, a fold of their sleeve caught on the handle of one of my precarious knives. The curvature in my palm let the blade slide free, but not before a small stinging line split open on my index fingertip.  
“Ouch,” I muttered, sharply withdrawing my hand. “I cut myself.”  
Immediately after saying this, I felt something in the air change, though I could not have said what. Some sort of tingling on my skin; there was a sound that I could not hear that I certainly did not like. Before I could react, Eli was upon me, and my left index finger was suddenly swathed in something warm and wet.  
“Oi!” I yelped, turning red in surprise as Eli closed their mouth, my digit resting beneath their tongue. “What the bloody hell are you—“  
They jammed their palm over my mouth, eyes wide and petrified, watching the white films in apprehensive terror as they twisted and shuddered, contorting strangely. I had seen a spider do something similar as it had suffocated in a jar once. Eli was not even breathing.  
I waited patiently, staring at the scientist curiously and glancing between their expression and the reels somewhat nervously.  
Slowly, the snakes drifted, and the sensation in the air settled down. My skin no longer felt so itchy. But when I tried to urge Eli to release my finger from their mouth, teeth met my flesh in warning.  
Eli seemed to ponder something, and then turned to face me, grabbing me rather roughly by the back of my neck and pulling me down against them. Nearly nose-to-nose, I still was not expecting a thin finger to suddenly jam its way between my lips as well, and I frowned in confusion but opened my jaws as guided. It felt very foolish, to sit there with my mouth open, and luckily it did not last long; taking my wrist in their hand, Eli put their mouth as close to mine as possible, touching them together on one side before twisting my wrist awkwardly. I nearly gagged on my own hand as it was suddenly shoved into my throat. Eli’s palm urged my mouth closed again, and I jerked back, suddenly with my own finger in my mouth.  
“Keep that there,” Eli demanded hoarsely, panic still very predominant in their eyes. “You keep that right there, you hear me?! Keep your lips sealed as tightly as you can. Don’t let them open! Put your tongue over your cut and push down—try not to breathe out as much as possible.”  
What the fuck had just happened? I was so confused, so I just sat there dumbly, like a toddler with my finger in my mouth.  
Eli turned back to face the memories, which were slowly, slowly drifting towards us.  
“This is vile,” Eli muttered, before forcing themselves to swallow, and swallow hard, a few times, before picking up the blade that had offended and stabbing the point into the earth, burying the metal in the dirt.  
I almost took my finger out of my mouth, almost forgot, in an effort to demand if Eli had just swallowed my blood, because that was quite frankly disgusting. I remembered my instructions just in time.  
Without glancing back at me, Eli stepped forwards and crouched near the shaking reels that were still stuck in the puddle.  
“Now you understand,” they murmured softly, extremely focused on their task. “Why I insisted on doing this.”  
No, actually, I do not, but I would guess that the two incidents are related, I thought rather bitterly. Putting together abstract information was not my strong suit.  
So I just sat there, with my eyebrow raised and my finger in my mouth.  
Eli glanced back at me as they cautiously managed to loosen another reel with only a second’s pause. I watched warily, wondering if they were going to become obsessive again, but whatever spell had been cast seemed to have been broken, at least... temporarily.  
“The memories, they’re very sharp,” the scientist murmured. “They try to cut you. They are extremely attracted to blood. I have no idea why, but if they smell it from you, they’ll enter your body and shred you inside and out.”  
My eyes locked on the long, violent scar pattern winding up Eli’s arm, glowing white in the light of the reels.  
Oh.  
“I’m nearly finished.”

It only took a few more hours of the many I had already spent waiting for Eli. Each time, the scientist reeled out, looking more stressed and worn. The light of insanity failed to breach their eyes any further, and so my anxieties were relieved but not entirely vanished.  
Finally, the last white snake was pulled from the murk, and every rope was left to twist and pulse slowly of its own relaxed accord in the air.  
Dragging themselves up next to me, Eli faintly rested their head on my shoulder. “There,” they offered, with a weak gesture towards the floating corpse. “Ta daa. I have no idea what else we are supposed to do. The person seems dead... I can’t cut the memories to end their existence in purgatory, I don’t—I don’t know what to do,” they sighed, flopping down on their back and flipping their sleeve over their eyes.  
I glanced over their body, then turned my attention back to the corpse.  
Hmmm. Puzzles. Not fun.  
I felt very limited with only one hand, but, I desperately needed to stretch some muscles. Rising, I carefully pulled my blade from the ground. If it had any blood on it, it could not be enough to warrant an attack.  
A white snake lazily drifted forwards as I approached, and I held my blade out in front of me, fear of this unknown predator freezing me slightly in my boots.  
The film slowly edged closer, pulling itself gently towards the knife.  
Eli had mentioned cutting.  
I waited, pensively, holding my breath, until the snake was very, very close. Every muscle in my body was tense.  
I leapt forwards. Slashing my knife several times, I spun and slashed, again and again, in moves long practised and memorized. Each time, the snake somehow drifted just beyond the reach of my blade, until I almost bumped into the body.  
Drawing back and covering my nose with my sleeve before taking deep breaths, I glared at the memories. Stepping up closer and closer, I fought down my nervousness and circled the body, trying to analyze it. It was difficult. Every feature meant so little to me; I had absolutely no idea what I was looking for. I gazed at the wound, but could see nothing through the extreme bright lights from the ropes. I looked into the eyes of the corpse. Much the same, and I could only hold the deadened stare for a mere moment before I was forced to glance away.  
Eli remained motionless on the ground.  
Perhaps the puddle? I was taught that mirrors and reflections had great importance; although, gazing back at myself from the sticky black abyss only reminded me of water. I resisted the urge to jerk back, and suddenly, something caught my eye.  
There was a very thin blue thread of light, reaching up through the puddle and connecting to the stranger’s chest wound. I tilted my head back and forth a few times. It was so thin that it was only visible from a couple angles against the black.  
Idly, I tried to pull it free by lifting it with the tip of my knife, and it snapped.  
Time stood still for a moment, before chaos exploded.  
The snakes shrieked, wailed, and thrashed, throwing me backwards. I rolled and threw myself over Eli, who bolted upright. “What the hell?!”  
The white ropes began to roll around the body, convulsing angrily as they tightened in a great writhing knot around the torso, spinning, fleeing, tangling, strangling, until they began to loosen and fold awkwardly on themselves. The body shuddered, eyes snapping shut and head jerking back as the memories began to burrow back in of their own accord, winding themselves into the small wound.  
I looked sharply to Eli, shifting to hold my knife in front of both of us and biting down on my finger. The scientist was staring on in as much shock as I was.  
“What the hell is happening?!”  
Maple-sucker, if I knew, I would not be so petrified.  
Wind had picked up from somewhere, buffeting my hair in all sorts of inconvenient directions. I was transfixed, and watched as slowly, the knot grew smaller and smaller, and the light receded, until it vanished altogether and the wound healed over in front of our eyes. Like sorcery.  
Eli and I held our breath.  
The body stumbled forwards out of the goo, colour returning to the clothes and skin. I kicked at the dirt to urge myself and Eli further out of the creature’s haphazard path, but it halted after a couple steps.  
Dark eyes blinked open. It stared at its hands for a moment, flexing the fingers, before looking around, clearly confused and still rather dazed.  
Then the gaze fixed on us.  
“W-why am I—“ it cut itself off, stiffening and shaking its head before slowly sinking to its knees, hands out to steady itself.  
Then it smiled, looking stunned and exhausted.  
“Hi there,” the human rasped. “Welcome to...the hotel.”  
And with that, the creature fell forwards and collapsed.  
After a few seconds of stillness, I rolled away from Eli, dragging my finger out of my mouth and spitting on the ground in disgust.  
Struggling to my feet, I pulled Eli up with me and stared at the new corpse.  
“Well,” I sighed through my teeth, eyebrows raised. “What the bloody hell do we do now?”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boyyyyy almost a month I’m so sorry guys life has been ~hell~ I haven’t forgotten about Memoirs of a Mortician either. Theoretically I have nothing to do through the second half of December so look forward to more updates.   
> Anywho, enjoy the next two chapters!

Hmmm. What had woken me?   
It did not take me long. The blue thread of energy connecting me to the mortal who had been wounded with the scythe, London, was drifting next to my ‘hand’—or rather, the unattached end of it was. The dead mortal had somehow been freed of my leash.   
I was not even sure how to feel about that. London was still in the world I had created, obviously, as there was no way out. I simply could not tell if the snapping of my thread meant that they were alive, or they were dead and gone for good.   
With a sigh I materialized my eyes into a stronger amber shape, looming forwards out of the shadows of my library to stare into the giant grey sphere before me. My smoke drifted with me, slowly coming together to form limbs and flesh and hair as I awoke.   
I tugged the end of the blue yarn closer to me. It had been cut, not ripped.   
Mm.   
Very curious.   
Theoretically, I figured that it may be very difficult for a mortal to slice through pure energy. Had a reaper awoken?   
A thought struck me. The reaper William was down there somewhere as well. I wondered if he would be petty enough to continue to pursue London, even after waking up in what must be coming across as a very strange world. My weaving skills were far from polished, and I had not put much thought or detail into it, except to make it survivable. There were no predators like Earth, no natural disasters; although, that didn’t mean that they could not happen. Any world was bound to have certain levels of unpredictability, especially with an atmosphere solid enough to allow humans to breathe.   
They had no sun, only a covering of smoke that drifted in hazy blankets to shield them from viewing my library, and the light of the souls that rested within its shelves all around me. I had accounted for night to occur. A thicker layer of smoke would wrap around the globe periodically and block out slightly more light, to allow for the humans to sleep.   
Either way.   
Clearly, the mortals were beginning to muddy things up already, and required some sort of intervention fairly soon.   
I unfolded my legs and limbs out of the abyss of time and slowly stretched, leaning forwards and slowly doing a flip in midair. Gravity who? I was king here.   
Hm. I considered for a moment, what I was to do. Surely, I was easily strong enough to just...   
Wait, what was I even going to do?  
I ran my seven fingers over my mouth and placed my chin in my hand.   
Well, I had to separate them. I was strong, but it would simply be easier to just leave Langdon and Eli, say, in the world somewhere, and take London somewhere isolated to work.   
Or perhaps I would take Langdon first. Or should it be Eli?   
Goodness me, this was turning out to be more difficult than I had prepared for.   
That was alright. Rubbing my temples with limbs of cold shadow, I pressed my eyes closed and tried to mentally map exactly what I just might do with these mortals.   
Create the perfect human; that was the goal. Surely, surely I could perform better than the mindless freaks that had abandoned me. I was worth this! I possessed the capabilities to...t-to fix their rotten mistakes!  
What characteristics did I need from each person? What was the best combination?   
Eli’s mind, London’s soul, Langdon’s body?  
Langdon’s soul, Eli’s body?   
Choices, choices. I had not thought this through. To be honest with myself, I recognized that I was mostly lashing out at the Undertaker; but no! I was above that kind of petty behaviour. This was for... for the benefit of... someone, dammit!  
My amber eyes flickered open. What was the perfect human body? Surely, it was something weathered, beaten and broken to the point that nothing would faze it, like Langdon. The mind, clearly, needed to be sharp and observant, congruent with Eli, with the pure soul of London.   
Perhaps not. Perhaps I had this wrong.   
I snapped my fingers.   
Aha.   
I could simply test this. Humans are remarkably resilient creatures; surely, I could just do some casual swapping with all three, see which one felt the best, acted the best. Surely my instincts on creating human nature would provide sufficient judgement.   
I required a task list.   
Slowly drifting around the grey globe, pulling myself casually through my library with my limbs while deep in thought, I assigned a goal to each finger. Something needed to be done with the reaper. He was far too strong; he was far too dangerous. Secondly, I was to find the trio, and do some swapping.   
...oh. Two. Two tasks? Pfa. Hahaha. Simple. Surely this could not go wrong.   
Very well.   
With a sigh, I exhaled deeply out my nose and carefully conjured a portal, pushing a split in time over the surface of the planet. A rift opened; I dissolved, and slid through.


	14. Chapter 14

“You said a name,” Grelle began, as I tipped the smaller cast-iron kettle over their cup and then mine.   
We were back at the desk, the table feeling too cramped against the wall for my liking. I had dragged one of the chairs and placed it across from myself.   
“Yes,” I cut in, with a glance at the redhead. Nothing seemed different. “A name which you seem not to remember.”  
“I don’t know anyone by William, not personally,” Grelle shook their head, brows bent in confusion.  
“You ought to,” I replied. Falling heavily into my chair, I lifted my cup and drained it in one, glancing at it with resentment before setting it aside. “You were head over heels for him.”  
“Ugh, for who am I not, though?” Grelle chuckled, fanning themselves lightly and flicking flamboyant hair over their shoulder.   
Leaning my forehead against my finger and thumb, I sighed and looked up at the red reaper from beneath my palm. “Grelle. Who is your current supervisor at dispatch?”  
“Oh that’s so funny that you should ask that, Undertaker!” They chirped, leaning back in their chair with their cup in hand. “Something’s just happened there. Some shady story about...something happening, and someone...leaving...” Grelle’s eyes jaded slightly, and the story trailed off as they seemingly struggled to recall exactly what was said. “Anyways, we don’t actually have one right now. Apparently it will be fixed soon. But it means less supervision!”  
“Do you recall your previous supervisor as being particularly strict, Grelle?” I prompted gently, hands flat on my desk and fingers massaging the surface out of mild anxiety.   
Grelle laughed again. “I guess I—“ and again, they stopped. “...I guess...I guess I do, or—or was she—was it a...was it a b-boy or a ...or a girl?” They murmured.   
“Was it a man or woman, Grelle?” I asked softly. “Do remember anything about them?”  
The redhead remained silent for a few moments, eyes glassy and distracted, lips parted with hesitance. Slowly, nervousness crept in. A small whimper; “...Undertaker?”  
“I am here,” I offered, unsure as to what was happening within Grelle’s mind.   
“...Why can’t I remember anything?”  
I pressed my lips into a thin line, running my hands through my hair and leaning forwards on the desk. My eyes never left the redhead. I analyzed their face, their eyes, their posture, all very quickly. Nothing seemed different.   
I sighed. “I am wondering the same thing, Grelle. I am wondering the same thing.”  
“Am I going to be okay?” Grelle whispered.   
“Yes, Grelle.”  
“C-can you remember someone who I can’t?”  
“Yes, Grelle.”  
After a few seconds of the red reaper staring off at the wall in dramatic silence, the double-ringed eyes lowered to focus on me again.   
“Undertaker... is everything alright?”  
Hm.   
With a sigh so heavy my sternum cracked, I tilted my head downwards, pressing my eyes onto my forearm as I exhaled against the desk. “...No, Grelle.” My voice cracked. “Nothing is alright. Something has gone wrong with William, and I—I do not understand what is happening, and...” breaking off into a whisper, I dreaded the sharp ache of torment that was creeping back to take shelter in my chest. “I have made too many mistakes, Grelle, I have, I really have—“  
I broke into another round of sobbing.  
Grelle took hardly two seconds to be at my side, and I wrapped my arms around the narrow frame and clutched the redhead to me, burying my nose in the long and soft red hair as I cried on their shoulder. Spontaneous sadness brought out such strange behaviours in me.   
“Grelle...” I hiccuped. “Do you remember the rogue soul? London? They ran—“  
“I don’t remember them?” Grelle interrupted. “A rogue soul? That sounds... frightening!”  
I stiffened, then pushed Grelle back, gripping them hard by the shoulders and glaring through my tears. “Wait a moment.. you do not recall London, either?”  
With wide eyes, Grelle slowly shook their head, gentle hands drawing the tears away from my cheeks. “I don’t. Are they someone else I should know?”  
Slowly, I drew back. The chair behind me scraped against the concrete. My body froze up; hair drifted forwards as I stood above Grelle, moving as though in shock.  
“Grelle...” I murmured. “Something very strange has seemingly occurred.”  
“Explain it to me Undertaker, you’re making me nervous!” the redhead exclaimed, anxiously swaying back and forth, debating whether they wished to run to me or to run away from me.   
“Two people vanish from your memory,” I whispered. “One gets eaten by memories...”  
“Eaten?!”  
“Not—not *eaten*,” I shook my head and crossed my arms for a brief moment, being sharply pulled back into real conversation. I pushed past Grelle and began to pace between the coffins.  
“Eli was working for me,” I murmured, wiping away another persistent teardrop and sniffing once. “Eli was able to physically manhandle the memories, but then began to be capable of remaining locked in the past for longer and longer, to ridiculous extents. Longer than I myself have ever been able to, upon reflection,” I realized. It had not seemed strange at the time. “Dammit!” I smacked my head. “I should have paid more attention! What could have been happening? The memories were nearly unaffected—“  
“That would take such high reel integrity,” Grelle murmured. “That’s unheard of. What sort of souls were you using?”  
“Perfectly unremarkable ones,” I waved the question away. “Although you’re correct in that the memories themselves would normally have come unravelled with that much meddling. Eli snuck in and changed past actions, from what I could gather. Strangely enough,” I continued. “They were then drawn to the memories, as though they had been pulled back, addicted uncontrollably, yet....I do not know what that might imply... What— I mean, why—“  
I stuttered in my own confusion.   
“Did this...Eli...have any kind of stabilizing power over the memories? Somebody had to be interfering with the unravelling process,” Grelle offered, catching my shoulder as I continued to pace and hauling me to a stop. Sharp green eyes blinked up at me. “Who could do that?”  
“Not Eli,” I snorted, “and not the corpses, and ...not...me...” I narrowed my eyes down at the redhead with suspicion. “Grelle, what are you suggesting?” I asked quietly, the apprehensive feeling of dread or anticipation of danger creeping over me.   
The reaper blinked and drew their feet together to stand in front of me. “Someone had to be controlling it,” they whispered back, glancing over their shoulder. Nothing to see there except the darkness of the morgue. “Somebody... else.”  
“But who could possess such weaving capabilities? No one else was with us! Ever!” I insisted, growing frustrated and turning away. I stared at the ground for a few seconds. Deep aggressive breaths began to pulse in and out of my chest, before another wave of emotion hit my throat and I doubled over. “Why must this be so hard?!” I screamed, voice echoing in the shop as the cries of ghostly green wind joined me. I buried my scythe in the concrete before I could express the urge to swing it, lest the redhead somehow get in the way. An explosion of rubble ricocheted out from where the metal bit the ground. I sensed Grelle flinch as a wave of pressure rippled around me with an uproar; then, the shop was silent for a moment.   
Grelle and I turned simultaneously to face the soft thud from the corner. Panting heavily, with Grelle trembling beside me, I fixed my glare on the single book that had fallen off of the shelf, and landed open on the floor.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all are troopers. Sometimes I write a line and I’m like, “yup, that’s it. That’s gold. That is the peak of my skill and talent and practise.” And then I go reread something and I’ve accidentally spelled Langdon as Landon or ‘tall’ has autocorrected to ‘y’all’. It’s awful. I try. Forgive my mistakes, I know not what I do and try to fix them when I see them. Anyways, enjoy! <3

I shrieked and flew forwards, scrabbling to remove the shears from my stomach. Everything was confusing and disorienting. I was in darkness—I was dying, was I dead? Wait, I was already dead—  
My hands fought empty air for only a few short moments before my head banged into something exceptionally hard. A loud ringing echoed in my skull as I fell back to the cold hard ground, groaning and covering my eyes.   
Dimly, I registered an unfamiliar scratchy voice with a familiar accent.   
“—put ‘em under the bell, huh?”   
“Oh my god! We’re complete idiots!”  
The voices shuffled closer and I tensed as I felt somebody lean over me, terrified that it was more reapers. The pressure of a palm carefully came to rest on my shoulder at the same moment that a boot nudged my hip in a far less friendly manner. The two voices talked over each other in sentences, each something along the lines of,   
“Oi, you good mate?” and “Are you alright?”  
I couldn’t help but flinch and crack open my eyes, peeking through my fingers just in time to see a pale blonde person lightly shoving somebody with jagged black hair and a scar across their cheek. “Get away, Langdon! You’re scaring them!”  
Immediately, I noticed that both odd characters wore slightly different versions of the same familiar black robes.   
I glanced down while they bickered. I was still dressed in my layered black pants, billowy red satin long-sleeve shirt, and my short copper-embossed boots. The same clothes I had left the morgue in. My shirt bore a tear in the centre.   
Gingerly, I lifted myself into a sitting position, cautiously shifting out from under the rim of the giant bronze bell that loomed above me. I raised my hands to look at them. Normal, with fingertips that were slightly paler than normal due to how long I had been... dead.   
I slowly slid my left hand into the slit in my shirt and gently felt at my stomach. Stitches, in a line. Pushing apart the folds of fabric, I peered at the wound. Black, coarse thread crossed in little x’s over a five-inch gash just above my navel.   
“..how.. did you.. sew it?” I cleared my throat and coughed. My voice was so alien.   
The pair of oddities immediately ceased their scrap and turned back to me, the blonde crouching down at my side. Bright crystal eyes peered into mine—not quite as paralyzing as the mortician, but, certainly not an unfamiliar sight, emeraldish irises framed by fair hair.   
“Um, hi. Uh, Langdon conveniently remembered they hid a needle in the seam of their sleeves. We just used thread from my robes, sterilized with a small amount of alcohol,” the blonde shrugged and grimaced. “But not much. It was the best we could do.”  
“Right, right...” I nodded slowly, eyes shifting to glance at the one with a British accent, supposedly Langdon, who was standing farther back with their arms crossed.   
They lifted their eyebrow at me in the silence before their steely grey gaze flickered to the blonde, who they nudged with their boot.   
“Since they’re so poor at introducing themself, this is Eli,” the Brit chuckled coarsely, “and I am Langdon.”  
I nodded mutely again, sitting further forward and numbly toying with my hair, sensing its heaviness upon my head. I just wanted to keep feeling normal for a moment.   
Then I glanced away from both of them, and out at the horizon. It was a very cloudy day—very, very cloudy. I seemed to be on a fairly tall tower, though the surface was not large. Our three bodies could lie beneath the bell, but only if we all laid parallel.  
Gently twisting my shoulders, I flipped onto my stomach and pulled myself to the edge of the tower and peered over.   
“It’s a church,” Eli murmured behind me. “We’re on the bell tower.”  
“More importantly,” Langdon added. “There’s fuckin goo everywhere and no people, and items that you pick up turn into goo.”  
I froze as I stared down at the ground, but not from some fear of heights; I noticed black puddles scattered across the grey streets below. That didn’t seem normal.   
I shrank back from the edge of the tower and stare-glared in confusion at Langdon.   
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “...Goo?”  
Eli rolled their eyes and straightened their knees to stand. They weren’t wearing any shoes. “Way to be subtle, Langdon.”  
“There is no time in life for subtlety,” Langdon snapped, crossing their arms again. “Newcomer, do you ‘ave a name?”  
I blinked and thought for a moment.   
“Yep,” I nodded. “Yep, I do. I think it’s London.”  
“You think?” Eli prompted. “Are you sure you feel alright?”  
Shaking my head and leaning forwards as I pressed my palm to my eyes, I grit my teeth and took a deep breath. “I’ve no idea man, I feel like I just came out of a coma. How long have I been asleep for? How did I get here?” Rational questions began to resurface. I glanced back up at Eli. “Did you bring me here? Where am I?”  
The blonde hesitated for a moment, glancing unsurely to their counterpart. “Er...here on the tower? Or here in this world?”  
I blinked. “This... what, we’re not on Earth?”  
Eli shrugged. “Honestly my best guess is like, a pocket dimension. I don’t know how to describe it, but things seem to be, like, copied weirdly. The buildings are all empty, windowless. We only found one item and it dissolved into a puddle. I think the black goo is sort of, erm, failed things. Failed stuff that can’t hold itself together.”  
“I have never related to black goo harder than I am right now,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes again. “And what about you Langdon? What do you think? You two seem far less confused than me. How long have you been here for?” I eyed Eli’s clothing. “Can’t have been long, right? Otherwise your feet would be blistered.”  
“Nah, they’re just cold as shit, but I’m from Canada, so it’s okay,” Eli chuckled and moved to sit a bit further away and tuck their feet under themselves with a shy smile.   
I looked at Langdon, who was busy looking at Eli. “And you’re from Britain?”  
“Aye,” Langdon replied stiffly.  
The others paused for a moment, and I sat and looked around. “Man, it’s real quiet around here, isn’t it?”   
“There are no sounds,” Eli nodded. “There’s no crickets. Nothing. No people. Even at night. Langdon came from a field, that way,” the blonde pointed to their left. If I squinted I could glimpse a yellow-ish field of grass or grains just beyond the horizon of the city. “...and I woke up in a building, here. We found you in a forest, the other way.” They gestured to the dark tree line.   
I nodded and glanced back down. Who the hell were these people? Where was I? And a question that was bothering me more, what happened to William? Where was he?   
“So what about you, London? You sound Americano of some sorto, are you from the same place as Eli ‘ere?” Langdon yanked me out of my thoughts as they turned to stand on the precipice of the tower.   
Easily the tallest of the three of us, Langdon’s frame was narrow and skeletal, the very definition of a wiry warrior. Their heeled boots were low and fairly flat, and looked to be quite old. They had that scar on their face; as they turned away from me, I glimpsed their hands. There were more scars the closer I looked. I sharpened my gaze at the black hair. It seemed familiar. The slate eyes. But I couldn’t tell where from.   
I looked at Eli once more. A strange feeling was beginning to itch at my memory. “...I am from California,” I answered slowly. “The west side of America. Langdon, I have a question for you—“  
“No, I don’t know where we are either, no we don’t have food or water, and no we don’t know how we got here, or how you got here.”  
“No, not that,” I waved my hands and slowly tested my legs, shaking them out and cautiously rising to stand. It felt... heavy. “But do I know you from somewhere? Have we met?”  
“No,” Langdon replied quickly, glancing back over their shoulder at me. “I never forget a face.”  
I glanced to Eli, who simply shrugged helplessly.   
Shaking my head, I stretched my arms upwards. “Well, friends, have we managed to figure out why we’re all stuck on this strange planet together? Any commonalities?”  
Langdon remained facing the city. Eli coughed. “Um, well, a few basic ones...nothing particularly notable—“  
“We have to keep moving now that you’re awake,” Langdon turned back to face us both stiffly. “Eli, do not forget what we saw earlier. Something has happened to the city. We are not safe here.”  
“Oh yes!” Eli’s bright eyes widened and they jumped to their feet. “Of course! The sky!”  
“The sky?” I asked.   
Eli nodded and glanced out at the city. “We actually only brought you back to the city because we felt like it was safer than staying in the forest, since we didn’t know how long you would be asleep for. But earlier, when Langdon and I were fleeing this place, the sky seemed to... split open into a sort of dark funnel and touch the ground. We don’t know what happened, but it was in the city.”  
“That’s...that’s called a tornado,” I offered hesitantly. “Those are normal.”  
Eli took a deep breath in through their nose. “I know what a tornado is. This was...faster, more sudden and over much quicker. And much louder. Anyways. Langdon is correct. We need to leave.”  
The two of them began to move towards the edge of the church tower to my right.  
I crossed my arms. “Woah woah, look, I want to trust you as much as any stranger. But I know nothing about you. Why should I come with you?” I asked, not to sound offensive, but rather, to gauge their motivations.   
Eli sighed and turned back to me. “Look mate, you don’t have to. But you won’t find any other people, and if you stay, we will leave you behind. We won’t come back for you,” the blonde warned quietly.   
“And frankly,” Langdon added, “your best chance of protection and survival of this Hell ordeal lies with us.”  
With that, black hair and black robes rippled upwards as Langdon disappeared over the edge of the tower.   
“No—!” I shrieked, leaping forwards automatically. Eli caught my shoulders, short frame weakly bumping against mine as they attempted to stop me from hurtling after the Brit. I glanced at their crystal eyes incredulously.   
Eli shook their head with an exasperated expression. “Langdon’s a dick. There’s a window just under the edge of the tower, that’s how we get up and down. They’re just being dramatic.”  
“Oh,” I blinked. “How the hell did you get me up here?”  
“Langdon, mostly,” Eli chuckled and stepped back, positioning themselves on the edge of the tower before swinging down and disappearing.   
Langdon’s scratchy voice echoed up from the stony ground far below, and I crept to the edge to glance over.   
“Oi!! Cali-o! Wot’s taking you so long?!”  
“Can’t say I’m a huge fan of heights!” I called back, laying flat on my stomach as I peered down at the street. I couldn’t see the window, but Eli popped out of the bottom of the tower a few seconds later.   
Now alone on the tower top, I took a moment to appreciate my isolation. The world was strange and dark, and oddly quiet. Langdon unnerved me. I was certain that I knew them from somewhere... I just, I couldn’t piece together where.   
“What if I miss the window?” I yelled. “I can’t even see it!”  
“I’ll catch you!”  
“Oh fuck off!”  
“No... Langdon actually will,” Eli shouted up, sounding rather resigned. “Get used to it.”  
“My strange friend, I will snap your spine in half if I land on you,” I called down.   
“Nah.”  
“You can’t just—you can’t just ‘nah’ physics!”  
“I don’t know what physics is,” Langdon replied, shrugging from sooooo far below... “But I seem to ‘nah’ it quite regularly. Come on. Try the window. A good trust exercise for a new teammate, hmm?”  
“You’re a psychopath!” I shrieked breathlessly.   
“More than you know!” Langdon laughed back. “Now git your arse down here!”  
I pressed my eyes shut and sighed, feeling at the edge of the building.   
“It’s in the centre?”  
“Dead centre,” Eli assured me. “Can’t miss it.”  
I tried to feel for a grip on the edge of the tower and shifted so my legs hung over the edge. I felt like I might throw up. The top of the tower only grew higher with every passing second, and before I could have second thoughts, I slid off and tried to catch myself. I immediately lost my grip on the dusty stones. My stomach plummeted with me, and I hit my hands off the edge of the window that had been indicated as I rocketed past it, not even able to scream as I felt my life about to end for, what, the third time now?  
I tensed and braced for impact with the ground.   
Two arms wrapped around my shoulders and waist. Langdon hit the ground and rolled with my momentum, somersaulting over me as we rolled towards the edge of the tower. After collision I tumbled out of the Brit’s grip and hit the wall, coughing once and glancing dizzily up at Eli.   
“I hate you all.”  
“Welcome aboard.”  
“I should have let you hit the ground,” Langdon groaned, lying facedown a few feet away from me on the cobblestones.   
Eli smiled kindly for a few moments before placidly clasping their hands in front of themselves. “Shall we move along?” They suggested sweetly.   
I pointed at their pale bare feet. “Don’t you want some protection first?”  
“Such as?” Eli cocked an eyebrow at me.   
“Well here,” I offered, kicking off my black and copper boots. “I’m wearing fairly thick stockings. You can wear these until we find you something better.”  
Langdon has glanced up a short ways into the conversation and watched with interest.  
Eli stepped back. “Oh, no— that’s alright, really, I’ve been managing—“  
“Hush,” I chuckled. “Just wear the boots. We both know I’m going to win this argument. Both people with some protection is better than one person completely bare.”  
“I think that’s called communism, and it never works,” Eli grumbled, shyly reaching forwards to take the boots from me as I held them out.  
I just sat back and caught my breath from the fall while Eli sat on the ground to slide them on. The blonde paused just as they opened the top a little bit. “But I’ve been walking around in bare feet! I’ll get the insides dirty!” They wailed miserably.   
I stared, dumbfounded. “You think that’s what matters in this situation?—“-“Put the damn boots on!” Langdon and I snapped simultaneously.   
Eli made a startled noise of defeat and slid into the boots.   
“Do they work?” I asked after a moment. “If they don’t, I can give you my stockings instead, although that’s a little gross for you.”  
“Ah yes, the most repulsive thing in the world,” Langdon rolled their eyes and hopped to their feet. “The human body.”  
“They’re fine... thank you so much,” Eli whispered.   
I glanced at Langdon incredulously before responding. “Well, ‘course dude. No problem. They fit?”  
“Slightly too big,” Eli replied. “But perfectly functioning, especially once tightened slightly with the buckle.”   
“Very well,” I rose and proffered my hand to help Eli up. Once standing, I tapped my toes on the ground a couple times, fidgeting nervously. I felt weirdly underdressed without my shoes. With a sigh and a grin, I looked back to Langdon, who was watching me with suspicion. “Shall we head out?”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok I have some notes!  
> First of all, by the way, I rocked Latin course in uni so hopefully Latin comments by the Antireaper or the Undertaker will actually be correct grammar! If something doesn’t go through google translate right, I will leave a translation at the bottom of the chapter.  
> Secondly! Honestly you guys, I came and searched for fanfictions involving the undertaker using various different filters from the point of a new user, and I am so so honoured with how quickly my works appear on the front page, and how highly rated they are. I’m so proud of the amount of hits and kudos and comments and everything! I’m so happy, and thank you guys so much for always supporting me. Regular comments are what I live for, it directly motivates me to keep writing. So much so that I am actually considering switching my major. I remember being so excited when my first story reached 20 hits!! Thank you all so much! I know my writing is certainly not top tier and is not even always my best product, but I really enjoy making it for you and certainly try to make up for a shit chapter by focusing better for the next one.  
> Thirdly, I have super neat surprises for this community in the works that I can’t really describe without giving it away. But be hyped!! Feel the hype energy! Especially... if you like music. ;)  
> Anyways. The first chapter here seemed short so I decided to post sort of 2 chapters in 1.  
> Enjoy!! Thanks for reading!!

“AAAAUGH!—IRRUMATO!” I screamed, portalling myself off of the tree I had somehow impaled myself on. Stumbling away from the black conifer, I shot limbs out in all directions, burying them into the ground to steady myself for a moment before drifting further away in distaste.  
“Deo damnatus,” I growled, brushing a pine needle off the front of my shirt. “I suck at... life,” I sighed, glancing up at the ashy grey sky. This place was... “...Depressing,” I muttered to myself. Colour was... not particularly vibrant. The smattering of trees on the edge of the forest, where I had landed, were all dull and muted. Dark shades of green and grey and black overlapped in repeating patterns, casting no distinct shadows throughout the forest, only accumulating in density and coagulating into a single dead entity the further in I stared.  
I shuddered and stepped away.  
The ground beneath my feet was smooth, like glass. I frowned at it quizzically. What had this tried to be? Frequently, in my larger creations, details would be forgotten, or left uncorrected, so sometimes key details and characteristics of a material would be missed.  
This surface was reflective and smooth, even glittering for how polished it was. It was grey, but not like metal. It was...  
I glanced upwards again. It seemed to be reflecting the sky...  
Ah, yes.  
An ocean.  
Well, I was quite certain that those were supposed to be made of water, and were meant to be soft, but since I did not intend to drag anyone through this ocean, I decided that it could simply just continue to exist as an anomaly... idly, I wondered what was at the bottom.  
I inhaled, which felt extremely strange once again. At least I had managed to simulate a correct atmosphere! What an accomplishment! That, by far, was the most important.  
Now... I had no idea where the mortals were.  
Nor the reaper, which posed a potentially serious issue...  
“Dammit!” I cursed again. Why could I never think things through? Why was this all so difficult!  
Taking a deep breath in through my nose, I slowly retracted all my limbs, which were tense with frustration. I needed to just relax. I literally had an eternity of time to find these pests. I was only upsetting myself, over insecurities that were impractical in these situations... sigh.  
Alright. Clearly, I had plenty of time. But what I needed was a home-base. A location, a fortress of some kind, since undoubtedly me experiments would need to be contained and protected.  
I did not want to be near the trees. The frozen ocean was quite gorgeous, obsidian glass reflecting the grey skies rather majestically—the trees on the other hand, were dull and only reminded me of my ultimate failure. How I would never be good enough at the one thing I could goddamn do.  
No, no anger.  
Sigh.  
Only concentration.  
I closed my eyes and portalled further away, until the trees were on the horizon. The ocean stretched further in every direction, and there, I carefully accessed a small section of my library, and pulled the blueprints for some sort of fort. What type would be best? Surely something with barriers. What was typically used as intimidating? A prison. A castle?  
I did not want an evil fortress, though. I found myself conflicted with practicality over mentality. I was not the villain here, and certainly did not need a villain’s lair. What was I to do?  
Ah!  
Perfect!  
I would use a castle—but a gorgeous one! I did not want a castle of black stone and spikes, but an inviting, welcoming, warm and comfortable castle!  
That would serve me perfectly.  
Surely, I had something like that, sitting somewhere...  
I began to build.

~~~

“What is it?” Grelle finally inquired, leaning over my shoulder.  
I flipped the page over, reminiscing about each line I had drawn and sketched. Surprised by the question, I closed the tome over my finger and leaned away slightly to glance up over my shoulder at the redhead.  
“You do not know what this is?” I murmured sceptically, before quirking my eyebrows and tilting my head back and forth in consideration. “I suppose it was before your time. How bloody young are you? Have I committed any crimes?”  
“You’re patronizing *me* for my age while fraternizing with mortals?” Grelle scoffed.  
“You know what, fair point,” I conceded, holding up a talon before turning back to the book.  
Flipping it open, I held it up for Grelle to see. “These creatures are called Antireapers,” I elaborated, tapping the page gently. “They eat the energies left behind at a mortal reaping. They are benevolent, quiet and otherwise, apparently, purposeless. Not much is known of their life.”  
Grelle scowled and flipped the page. “Why haven’t I ever seen one?”  
“They went extinct decades and decades ago,” I murmured. “I suppose before you were even a reaper.”  
“What happened to them?” The redhead prompted, turning around to sit on the edge of my desk and face me, slender arms crossed, fearful eyes fixed on mine.  
I sighed and closed the book. “I did. A war did. One of the youngest Antireapers led a resistance, and the species suddenly became vicious, attacking reapers at every opportunity. There was a great extermination of them... largely, I was in control of diminishing their populations, and eventually, they all died. They were either slaughtered, or the weaker ones that were spared disappeared and starved.”  
“Oh my god,” Grelle whispered. “Why don’t reapers hear of this?”  
“...I suppose they perhaps do not want more deserters,” I whispered to myself, also confused.  
Grelle blinked. “Wait—What? More deserters? What do you mean, why did that make you desert? We kill demons all the time!”  
Glancing up, I shook myself out of my stupor and stood from my chair. “That does not matter. History is unimportant at this point... Antireapers are dead,” I concluded, dropping the book on the desk with mild frustration and walking away. Grelle only took a moment to chase after me. “Undertaker—“  
“I need to find Eli, I am not going to be distracted by stories.”  
“But I just want to know—“  
“Are you going to help, or are you going to go away?!” I snapped, spinning on my heel to stare the redhead down.  
Grelle cowered under my gaze, faltering in on themself and flinching from my glare. “Undertaker, calm down,” they pleaded. “Do Antireapers have access to film reels?”  
“Antireapers—are—dead!” I hissed. “It may as well be fiction to you! You may as well be asking if unicorns can make cinnamon buns!!” I hit myself in the head and stormed away, entirely irritated that I was wasting my time, and grabbed the door handle to the basement. Surely I had missed something.  
“So theoretically yes?” Grelle called. “Because...you cannot prove that unicorns can’t make cinnamon buns... so... theoretically... Antireapers, in their ‘fictional’ story, *can* access memories?”  
I growled under my breath and banged my head against the door. “Fine, fine,” I snapped, turning back to face Grelle and folding my arms over my chest angrily. “Yes,” I sighed. “They do. Antireapers can access memories. That is how they interfered... the motivation of the uprising was that they wanted to take the souls of humans for themselves.” I lifted my hands. “Happy?”  
Grelle crept forwards. “Undertaker, what happened to Eli... leading up to their vanishing?”  
“They continued to enter the memories. That was it.”  
“The past, yes?” Grelle continued, nervous smile creeping its way onto their painted lips. “Perhaps a past where...Antireapers still existed?”  
“Oh for god’s sake Grelle, pull yourself together,” I chided. “You’re believing in a fantasy. What, you think that some sort of Antireaper fugitive is hiding in other people’s histories?”  
Grelle’s eyes flickered away for a second before they grimaced. “Uh, yes?”  
There was a moment of silence in the shop. I stared at the redhead cowering in front of me, and slowly, my eyebrows lifted.  
“Holy shit,” I breathed slowly. “Grelle!” I stepped forwards and grabbed them by their shoulders. I felt their reaper muscles tense up beneath my grip. While stronger than a mortal’s, Grelle’s resistance still felt fragile compared to my strength. Peering down at the anxious reaper, I held them still and blinked incredulously. “You’re a genius!”  
“I-I am?” Grelle stammered, as I pulled them to me and wrapped my arms around their shoulders. Small hands very hesitantly ghosted around my hips as Grelle debated what to do with themself, but I was uncaring of their inner mental struggle.  
“If you are correct,” I slowly thought aloud, carefully running my fingers through Grelle’s soft hair and gazing off into my shop. “Then... something very bad has happened to William, most likely. And I do certainly fear for Eli’s safety—although, why on earth would an Antireaper not simply take Eli’s soul, then? Or the souls of the people it was... ‘inhabiting’?”  
“Are you suggesting an—“  
“Ulterior motive,” I nodded slowly, beginning to sway side to side idly as I concentrated. The redhead was still tense in my grip. “Although I have no clue as to what that might be.”  
“Does this bring us hope for... retrieving this William, and your friend?” Grelle asked, leaning back to look up at me.  
“Hmm,” I murmured, meeting their gaze and stilling my movements. “I do hope so, Grelle. I do hope so. Although I do not know how to go about finding these creatures, or... much about them..”  
“There may be information in the library,” Grelle shrugged. “Back at dispatch.”  
“And how do you propose I access such information?” I inquired. “Since I have been so distastefully banned?”  
Placing their hands against my chest, Grelle cast their gaze nervously to the floor. “I—I don’t know, Undertaker,” they murmured. “I’m not really that experienced in... breaching t-the protective boundaries of dispatch...”  
After a short debate, I sighed inwardly. “Grelle,” I murmured, tightening my grip on their shoulders.  
The redhead tensed up, eyes widening in terror as the hands on my chest pushed against me. “W-what?”  
“Grelle,” I whispered again. “I need you to sneak the books out for me.”  
“Undertaker!” They whimpered, leaning forwards and thumping a fist against my shoulder lightly. “You know I can’t do that!”  
“Please,” I breathed, slowly lifting my left hand to their chin and tilting it up to look at me. “Please Grelle, you are missing more than you know. William meant the world to you,” I pleaded. “You would have died for him.”  
The redhead’s eyes, to my surprise, welled up with tears when they flickered up to meet mine.  
“Are you lying?” Grelle whispered.  
Taken aback, I dropped my grip on the red reaper and stepped away. I felt wounded. It was clear now; I had buried myself in too many lies, made too many mistakes.  
“Oh god...I never even found out what happened to Langdon,” I whispered to myself.  
I had chased everyone I ever loved away.  
No one could possibly love me enough to bear the negatives. Perhaps it was not that anyone was taken; nobody wanted to stay.  
I crumbled.  
What could I do? I had to convince Grelle that this was necessary. I had to retrieve Eli, and then promptly release them back to their timeline, free from my custody. I did not want to keep such a frightened and forced friend. But it was still my job to find them; my only redemption. I owed it to them.  
I owed it to everyone.  
For lack of any better a representation of my desperation, I fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around Grelle’s waist.  
“Grelle,” I whispered, tears rolling down my face. “Whatever I have done to hurt you; all of my behaviour is in the past. Please, believe me, I am not lying,” I begged, curling my fingers into the long red coat hanging from the reaper’s arms and flipping hair back over my head as I stared up at them. “Grelle, please,” I pleaded. “Help me!”  
Wet mascara was running down Grelle’s pale face. Frightened and saddened eyes stared back down at me, as Grelle flinched and clapped their hand over their mouth, shaking their head vehemently.  
“Grelle! I promise you, I promise you!” I cried. “Please! I promise you it will be worth it to get William back! You loved him!”  
“You’re using me,” Grelle whispered back, voice shaking.  
I froze. “No—Grelle, no! No! I’m not! I don’t want William, I hate his guts—you love him! Grelle, dammit, remember your love!”  
“You’re lying to me!” Grelle hissed, looking away from me. Gritting their teeth, they clenched both fists and rubbed them into their eyes. “Why do you always do this! You always need something impossible from me! You set me up to laugh at me!”  
“Grelle!” I sobbed, burying my face into their coat. “Please! I need you to believe me one last time!”  
“No, Undertaker!” Grelle shrieked, leaning away from me. “I won’t help you! You won’t make a fool of me this time! You always do this!” They wailed. “Not this time! I can deal with when you call me in to tease me, you ask for small favours or make me blush to torment me—you make fun of me and I don’t care! But asking me to risk my life and my profession is not—FUNNY!” Grelle sobbed in return, ripping their coat out of my grip and stumbling away.  
I fell to my hands and collapsed on the floor, crying into my sleeves on the dusty cement.  
I heard the high heels dashing away from me, and the bell above the doorway of the shop rang once; the door opened.  
I dragged in a heaving sob, shaking in my throat. I couldn’t even see, blinded by the hair that was sticking to my tears, as I reached out a hand desperately. “Grelle!!” I screamed. “You’re the only person who can help me!!”  
The bell above the door rang a second time; the door swung shut.  
I let myself keep crying.  
There was no point in not, really. This must be it. Surely, this pain in my chest, as I shook and convulsed on the floor, would kill me. Finally. My last hope at retrieving Eli, who in themself was my last hope of...of anything... had all just fled out my door.  
I hit my hand against the concrete, breaking all the bones within it. They healed quickly and I repeated the action. The pain was cathartic.  
My breath was sticking in my throat in panic-inducing bubbles, my body shaking as I clutched my stomach. Perhaps I would throw up.  
Tears fell in cascades. My eyes were sore from how much I had cried in the recent past, stinging and raw as my anguish spilled out through them over and over, soaking my sleeve.  
“I’m s-sorry,” I gasped, to the shadows of the shop. “I-I’m so sorry...”  
I sniffled and wept further.  
A shaky voice spoke up.  
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Grelle whispered softly.  
I glanced up sharply in time to see them trying to wipe away their own black tears with the edge of their hand, leaning on the inside of the closed front door.  
Scrambling to my knees, I dragged hair away from my face with my talons and stared at the redhead with shock. “Grelle, I—“  
“You’re a disaster,” they shook their head and stepped further into the room.  
Still crying, I made a flimsy attempt at cleaning myself up with my sleeve, unable to decide whether to dust myself off or wipe my face. Giving up, I fell backwards into a weak sitting position and sobbed into my hands, partly in relief.  
The heels clicked up to me. I glanced up at the redhead, feeling overwhelmingly joyous and also completely defeated. I so clearly did not deserve to have them here with me at all.  
“Come on now,” Grelle snapped high voice shaking and failing to hide their own emotion as they tried to command me. “Stiff upper lip!”  
I shook my head and sucked in a desperate breath, leaning away and moving to weep more into my arm.  
Grelle bent in front of me. Before I had an opportunity to understand their actions, a palm snapped across my face.  
I gently lifted my fingertips to touch the stinging red welt on my left cheek, open-mouthed.  
“FffffffuuUUCK that felt great! Can I do that again?”  
I glanced up at Grelle, who was clearly conflicted with their sadistic excitement. Slowly, I nodded and flinched, prepared for the next strike that fell across the right side of my face. I still gasped and fell back a ways at the sting.  
“Feel free to continue,” I whispered, despite holding my pale hands up in weak defence. “It is plenty what I deserve.”  
“Oh Undertaker,” Grelle growled. “Don’t tempt me. Get up.”  
The toe of Grelle’s shoe kicked me lightly in the ribs, urging me to stand.  
Dragging my sleeves across my face, I unsteadily rose to my feet and turned to look at Grelle sheepishly, before pulling my dusty and damp robes off over my head.  
“Undertaker!—“  
“Silence,” I commanded, dragging my clothes to my bedroom and pulling a fresh set on. “You can stand to look at me for forty seconds while I fix my goddamn life.”  
Storming back into the main area, I grabbed the teapot and vanished to the well tap to fill it, lighting a fire in the stove and setting the pot to boil in the kitchen while Grelle stood uncertainly in the shop. After a few minutes of me scanning my bookshelves and muttering to myself, Grelle perched on my desk once again.  
Eventually I brought over a small collection of tomes that might contain information on Antireapers. Grelle and I flipped through them carefully, picking up hints and skeleton facts of the creatures, only interrupted by the temporary shriek of the kettle.  
Learning only subtle things, such as common colours and habits of Antireapers as well as some myths surrounding their existence, Grelle and I quickly found ourselves void of resources.  
Folding their hands on the desk, Grelle anxiously tapped their shiny red nails on the dark wood. “Now Undertaker,” they began. “I am not willing to risk myself entirely for you, with no guarantee that you will come to my aid should I find myself in trouble. But, I am willing to help you. So,” they took a deep breath in and out while I patiently listened. “Let’s make a plan.”


	17. Chapter 17

The American was rather odd. I was confused, because they mentioned, specifically, California, and spoke with a modern Californian accent... but California wasn’t even founded until the mid 1800’s if I recalled correctly, much less carried its own foreign accent and culture. Yet... London—which was going to be extremely difficult, not to call Langdon and London each other’s names—was dressed similarly to what I had seen in the Victorian English public.   
And these boots.   
The buckle style was unnervingly similar as to something I had seen before. And worst of all, that wound in the centre of their abdomen... all I could think of was the mortician, burying his scythe in the stomachs of the cadavers in his shop.   
Despite all this, I couldn’t help but feel comfortable with the newcomer. They seemed to radiate happiness, and despite Langdon’s aggressive glares and withdrawals from conversation, London continued to laugh and chat idly with them, as though unaware of the mistrust. I took my opportunity to watch from afar and observe the behaviour, or look for any weird black goo or—whatever the hell else could go wrong at this point.   
Speaking of goo, London was quickly introduced to the concept, when they crouched and dipped a finger in. They were appropriately disgusted by the Velcro sound, and... otherwise, the stranger was just very normal.   
Not understanding where they came from bothered me, though. At least with Langdon, within basically hours of meeting them, I knew exactly what they had in common with me... even though they were not quite aware of my full story. I had to figure out what was going on a little more by myself before divulging previous information, or at least gauge their personalities.   
“So Eli!” Suddenly the American’s hand slapped my shoulder joyously. “Y’all mentioned some kind of item issue going on, right? Like something that you found, and ‘failed to keep existing’ or whatever?”  
“Uh, yeah,” I agreed, adjusting my glasses habitually and smiling nervously. “We found a jar of some sort, an antique jar of some sort. Langdon couldn’t read it in time before it dissolved into black goo. But it’s the only item we’ve found in the city. I thought that perhaps items became more solid the closer to the centre of the city we got, but... it seems that I was wrong. But now I’m confused by that pot, because I don’t understand why it survived at all.”  
“Strange,” The newcomer’s cheery face scowled. “I’m really not sure what to tell ya. You checked out the city, right?”  
“Sort of...” I murmured. “Enough to disprove my hypothesis. But then we were running from whatever fell from the sky.”  
London made some sort of neutrally disapproving noise and drifted back over to bother Langdon more.   
Whatever fell from the sky, yes. That was my only explanation for what happened...the entire occurrence seemed very supernatural to me. We were currently making our way through the streets of the city, back towards the forest.   
The hints and signs of Myrverth were concerning me. The truth was, I still had no idea what sort of demon-ghost thing Myrverth was, nor what they were capable of.   
And meanwhile, I figured Langdon still had no idea that London and I were time-travellers, and frankly, had no idea how to break that news. This wasn’t the only issue I was having regarding Langdon. When London had asked if they knew them, Langdon had reacted extremely quickly, which contradicted what they had said in the forest. They shifted from ‘I think I know them’ to ‘fuck off I don’t know you’. I wondered if Langdon also had suspicions about London’s relationship with the mortician. But how? The real tip for me was that California slip-up... but I couldn’t imagine anyone getting stabbed by the Undertaker miraculously surviving, or having such a happy disposition immediately after.   
Myrverth had pulled me out of the shop, and then everything went dark, and I woke up here.   
How did the other two get here?  
Langdon...also knew the mortician. And had believed the experiment story pretty easily, but given nothing away. Perhaps they were forced to do the same thing? Perhaps they came before me? They had mentioned torture, after all.   
I shuddered.   
If that was the case, clearly Langdon had come out with a more violent experience. Cut with a knife.   
Or perhaps, a scythe?  
I just didn’t know, and it was frustrating me.   
I needed to corner each individual alone and accrue information somehow. This unfortunately seemed impossible, without directly commanding the third to go stand fifteen feet away and cover their ears, which would not go over very well.  
I shook my head and snapped out of my thoughts. London and Langdon were chatting, Langdon giving terse and guarded responses. It was strange to see such blatant hostility. London, again, seemed not to care, and continued to beam with gorgeously maintained teeth— yup. Definitely from the future, for teeth that straight. They seemed to be discussing childhoods.  
“I think I grew up pretty normal,” London chirped. “My parents and I got into a small fight in my late teen years over something pretty ridiculous... haven’t seen them since. Pretty dumb, right? They moved to Iceland.”  
Langdon lifted their sharp eyebrows. “Sounds terrible.”  
“Well, I mean, it’s not that bad. Like it sucks that I haven’t seen them, and get no money or anything, but I mean, there’s still potential. Assuming I ever get back there, I guess.”  
“Right.”  
“What about you Eli?” London called.   
“Me? Oh, I’m even more normal than you,” I replied. “My parents loved me and are still together.”  
“Interesting that you used past-tense when referring to yourself,” Langdon muttered, sending a strange look my way. “Why?”   
I actually felt a nervous sweat prickle at my skin. “Uh—I don’t know,” I chuckled. “Just habit, I guess, since I moved out, I talk about our relationship past-tense.”  
“Mm.”  
“Eli, I would argue that your parents being together and still connected to you actually makes you less normal,” London laughed good-naturedly. “The majority of people’s parents aren’t together in North America, I think.”  
“Perhaps,” I replied, casting my eyes back down to my feet.   
“Langdon, what about you?”  
There was a short silence, only broken by our collective footsteps. London added, “your parents I mean? Although, you don’t have to tell us if it’s personal—“  
“Isn’t everything about a person ‘personal’?” Langdon replied calmly, with no inflection of anger. “My parents died.”  
Both London and I stopped walking. I recovered faster, and cast my eyes away and remained silent as London caught up to us. “Oh Langdon, I’m so sorry—“  
“Don’t be. I barely remember them. They both died on the same day, when I was six,” Langdon sighed.  
We kept walking in silence.   
“Langdon, I didn’t mean to—“  
“If there is something I do not want you to know, I will not tell you,” Langdon replied coolly. My nerves were on high alert the entire time. London didn’t even understand how many blades were on that dangerous body right now.   
Silence again.   
Then, to my dismay, London had the brazenness to speak up again.   
“...well... if there is anything else you want us to know, I believe I speak for both Eli and me when I say that you can tell us, if you need to talk about... that day, or... what happened to them or something...”  
I cringed. Shut up. Shut up. Shut the fuck up, you’re going to make them snap, you stupid, kind-hearted American—  
“I do not want you to know that,” Langdon smiled rather mischievously at London’s nervous expression. “Therefore, I will not tell you.”  
Langdon walked on, still grinning strangely to themself. I shot London a relieved look and hurried along to keep up with the Brit, and the American trailed along behind, and decided that perhaps, just perhaps, it was better to make easy conversation with me than Langdon.   
We continued towards the forest.


	18. Chapter 18

I sighed to myself, nerves on edge. I had not participated in anything this risky since my youth.   
Well. Relative youth.   
The feeling of anticipatory adrenaline was familiar, making me tap my nails softly on the floor of the cupboard. Grelle had allowed me to travel through their portal so that there was no unregistered entry to dispatch, but from there, we split; I had my own risks to take, my own sleuthing to do, and my own intimidation game to play.  
I had snuck in through a fourth story window, carefully prying it open and sliding into the dark room successfully and silently. To ensure that I would not be caught prematurely, this took place at four o’clock in the morning. Later on, the room beyond the cupboard where I was hiding lit up, and I heard my target begin to wander back and forth, moving things and washing glassware before leaving again, presumably to sit and read documents.   
The plan was not simple. It contained straightforward steps, but Grelle’s and mine’s success relied on the response of the third party and timing. The most stressful of pressures. I could not be caught until I chose to step out. This particular reaper, I knew, and Grelle knew, would remain in the office until the very late evening, when most other reapers had vacated dispatch. Then I would step out from the cupboard and take him by surprise. From there, it was up to me to gauge reactions and either coerce keys to the secure section of the library, or acquire them by force if necessary.   
I had guessed that the information we were looking for would not be in the open and accessible area of the library, since no young reapers seemed to be privy to the stories of the Antireapers. It’s funny, how within every ‘free-information’ platform was a secret section, for the elite, the specially chosen for one reason or another. Every organization’s library has a forbidden section. This reaper was my best chance at garnering access—as head of the Forensics division, I knew he would have a way to get to the ancient and secret case files.   
I heard my breath quietly echoing in the small wooden cupboard beneath the lab counter. Strange. I did not feel stressed enough to be breathing. The habits of mortals were hard to break.   
Patience was critical for this portion of the plan. I must not shift, and I must not make noise. I must not be caught.   
Luckily, several hours was a time frame that passed quickly once somebody reached an age like mine. The lights of the lab flicked on and off occasionally, indirectly ensuring that I paid attention. I checked my pocket-watch occasionally. I had decided that my loose black robes were only posing potential dangers and inconveniences. I crouched in the cupboard in nothing more than my boots, pants with pockets, and tight white button-up shirt. My silver hair was down my back in a secure and heavy braid, courtesy of the redhead, with only a couple locks hanging loose in my face for me to play with idly in the darkness while I waited.   
The hours trudged past. The thrill of the wait was similar to being just about to walk onto some sort of stage. I felt that despite knowing what I was doing, I was wildly unprepared for the events about to unfold.   
Ah well. I had no pulse to speed.   
The marked time grew closer. The plan was, once I had broken into the secure part of the library, I would try and sneak back out. Stealth, and nothing more. Grelle would be waiting for me at a safe point. The issue was, I couldn’t kidnap this reaper, and I certainly could not let him see that Grelle was helping me. That was part of the deal. So, if I had to use force, there was a possibility that the lab rat would run away and sound some sort of alarm. As such, I had to be extraordinarily fast. If other reapers caught up to us as I met Grelle, there was an agreement that the redhead would fight me, on the side of dispatch, and that it was then my responsibility to get myself home. Which... considering the quicker portals were traceable, meant I would not be able to stay at the shop any longer, as I would have to dip in to grab supplies and immediately go on the run. We had considered bringing ropes and such to subdue our victim, but if I appeared bearing tape and ropes and belts on my person, that would eliminate any chances of more pleasant communication and cooperation.   
So.   
The best course of action was to hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.   
I took a deep, silent breath. 7:56.   
Really, I could just step out of the cupboard at any time this point. Minutes did not matter. There were no bombs or tripwires, no timers or hourglasses running out.   
Any time I wanted now, really.   
7:57.   
Waiting was silly.   
The reaper walked right past my cupboard and I flinched, grinding my jaw.   
7:58.   
There was no point in stalling.   
The reaper strode past the other way, and the lights flicked off.   
7:59.   
Alright. To hell with it.   
The cupboard door swung open, and suddenly, my small world was torn open and dumped into a much bigger and colder room. I unfolded my long legs from underneath me and slid out of the shadows, like a spider scuttling across the floor. The other reaper had drifted over to the desk that I knew was on the other side of the wall. I was in the lab; the office was connected by a single door, a yellow square of artificial light beaming in from the window above me.   
I carefully stretched and lifted myself to my feet.   
Creeping up to the door, I placed my fingers on the icy metal of the handle, before steeling myself and wincing as the rotation made it click. Without even looking at the reaper, I slid into the room and closed the door behind me. I kept my back to the room.   
Almost immediately, I heard something shatter and flinched back, lifting my eyes as I jumped out of my skin.   
The littler reaper’s already exceptionally large and cat-like eyes were wide with fright, the hand that had previously held the teacup, now in pieces on the desk, frozen in place halfway up in the air to meet with his open mouth.  
“Hello,” I offered weakly after a moment of silence. “Othello.”   
Othello was sat in his office chair, leaning back with his feet up on his desk, a file now loosely gripped in one hand and emptiness in the other. His hingeless glasses had slid down his nose. It had been so long since I had seen his face that it felt like centuries, yet every line was still familiar.   
The startled eyes blinked and narrowed as Othello slid his legs off his desk and rocked forwards, still staring at me. I nervously toyed with my fingers in the quiet.   
He blinked again and finally broke the silence. “How the *fuck* did you get in here?”  
I gestured meekly over my shoulder towards the lab. “Window.”  
Othello stood suddenly from his chair and tossed the file onto his desk, stepping around the furnishing and sitting on the edge. He crossed his arms and glared at me sternly, or as sternly as someone who appeared to be 5’8” could.   
“Long time, no see,” he growled. “What the hell are you doing here?”  
“What?” I smiled shyly, taking a couple of slow steps into the room. “Perhaps I just missed you, old friend.”  
“Don’t you ‘old friend’ me,” Othello hissed, tensing up against his desk as I approached, despite still having an entire room between us.   
“No,” I agreed, stopping short and glancing him up and down stiffly. “You have not aged a day.”  
“You have,” Othello snapped back, nervously glancing away for just a moment and adjusting his glasses. “What the hell has happened to you? You look awful.”  
“Thanks,” I rolled my eyes tiredly. “I feel awful.”  
Othello sighed and loosened his shoulders. “Undertaker, why are you here? And more importantly, why shouldn’t I call security?”  
“You know I could take them,” I murmured, taking another step forwards. “You know I could beat them and take whatever I wanted from you, no matter who you call.”  
Fear lanced across Othello’s features and he froze up again, slowly resting his hands on the edge of the desk on either side of himself, sleeves of his lab coat sliding down his thin arms to cover his wrists.   
I tilted my head with an appreciative grin. “You haven’t changed at all.”  
“Neither have you, come to think of it,” he quipped back. “Still the same old evil dirtbag—“  
“Ooh, those are rather rude words, Othello,” I chided, taking yet another step towards him. “Might want to be careful what comes out your mouth.”  
“You stay away from me,” Othello hissed, knuckles white against his desk as he prepared to run.   
Calculating quickly, I stepped back and lifted my hands defensively. “Very well,” I inclined my head and spoke more softly. “I am not here to hurt you.”  
“I don’t believe that for a goddamn second,” he whispered, wide eyes still paralyzed. The tension in his body was infecting the room with stress.   
I shrugged my shoulders and gestured to myself. “I am unarmed.”  
“You don’t have your scythe?”  
“I cannot access it from here,” I explained hesitantly. “It resides in the mortal realm.”  
Before I understood what was happening, Othello growled, grabbed something from his desk, and lunged at me.   
That was what always ended up throwing a wrench in my plans. People always reacted so unpredictably.   
Instinctually, I caught a grip on the shoulders of Othello’s lab coat as he collided with me, before being dragged to the floor by his momentum.   
“Christ! Othello, do not—“  
My eyes widened and I ducked to the side as a scalpel struck the floor where my face had just been. “Othello! Stop!” I shoved him away from me. His specs were knocked loose as he leaned his weight on my arms. I was forced to jerk to the side to avoid being stabbed in the throat as we scuffled in the floor.  
“Othello!” I growled desperately, kicking him away from me haphazardly. He rolled, lab coat tails flipping around him as he tried to get his feet beneath him to attack again. “Othello! Listen to m—“  
The forensics reaper lunged again and hit me head-on as I moved to sit up. I grabbed him by the hair and dragged his narrow frame off of me, rolling overtop of him. Managing to pin him down with ease, I grabbed his wrist and began to wrestle the scalpel from him, when a new idea occurred to me.   
I let my fingers slip and fumbled my grip, and rocked back when Othello naturally moved to slash the knife at my chest. Falling back onto my hands, I scrambled backwards, acting afraid and weakened. Othello collected himself and leapt at me once more. I let him pin me down, and tilted my head away with a wince as the scalpel edge was pressed to my skin just below my jaw.   
“DO IT!!” He screamed, as I froze up. “CALL YOUR SCYTHE, you LIAR!”  
“I don’t have it!” I gasped. “Othello *please*! Listen to me! I don’t have it!”  
His minimal weight shifted atop my hips as he grew uncomfortable in the silence that followed. I kept my hands out flat and my cheek pressed to the cold tile, the knife biting into my throat as I waited for him to make up his mind. If Othello followed through and tried to cut my throat, I would have him flat on his front and screaming in pain within moments. If he backed off, I could continue to play the game, and potentially convince him to help me.   
My muscles were tense. My breathing was still. I could barely see his dark green hair out of the corner of my eyes as I glanced sideways at him, analyzing his position as he sat atop me, the hand holding the scalpel to my flesh shaking with nerves.   
After an eternity of tension, he rolled away, scooping his glasses up off the floor and perching them on his nose as he stood. Storming away from me, he tossed the scalpel onto the counter by the window and dragged his hands through his hair as his wooden sandals clicked away across the floor.   
“Why are you here, Undertaker?” He demanded quietly.   
I slowly sat forwards, relieved that it did not come to further conflict, and rubbed my neck idly. “I need your help.”  
“No.”  
“Please, Othello, I need to get into the library.”  
“What—“ he turned back to stare over his shoulder at me questioningly as I stood. “The library is free to access. What the hell are you doing, breaking in here and demanding my time? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten where it is.”  
I waved him away. “Of course not. I need access to the restricted section, Othello. You know. The section with forbidden cases.”  
“Undertaker!” He gasped sharply, spinning dangerously on his heel to face me entirely. “You know I can’t do that!”  
“Frankly, Othello, what you think you can and cannot do is of no consequence. I know you have the keys. I also know that I am capable of taking them from you. If you wish to keep your keys, you will help me and let me into the library. If you would rather lose your keys to me permanently, I will attack you, knock you out, and take them myself.”  
“I will stop you,” Othello breathed. “Why do you need to get in there?”   
“If I tell you,” I said slowly. “You will panic.”  
“I will not!”  
“You will, Othello. I do not have time to explain everything to you, and without context, you will jump to conclusions about me,” I sighed. “And speaking of time, it is rather of the essence.” I checked my pocket-watch quickly before tucking it back into my pocket. I dropped my voice. “So are you helping me, or are you waking up with a headache tomorrow?”   
“You don’t know where the keys are,” Othello whispered, eyes wide again.   
“Do you really want me to make you tell me?” I murmured. “Othello, I promise you I am not doing any of this for the sake of hurting anyone.”  
“Oh no?” He snapped. “Just going to blackmail a superior reaper into dropping your charges, or what?”  
“I don’t care about office drama!” I snarled. “This is precisely why I abandoned you all years ago! My damn file is in there Othello, I know you’ve read it. You never thought it was odd that I suddenly vanished?!”  
“You didn’t vanish,” Othello hissed. “You deserted! With no explanation!”  
“Did you read my case file?!”  
“—you never came and talked to me after that, not once! I was left to think the worst, to think you were dead, until you showed up making goddamn zombies—!”  
“DID YOU READ MY CASE FILE?!” I roared, kicking the floor with my heel to add an echo to my voice.  
Othello buckled in fear and fell to the ground, covering his face with his arm.   
“Yes!” He shrieked. “Of course I read it!”  
“Then shut up!” I snapped, my braid whipping at my back as I shook my head in frustration. “Shut up and help me, dammit! Someone’s goddamn life is in danger!”  
“—just because I read it doesn’t mean I trust that what is in it is true!”  
I faltered. “Othello...it-it’s my writing,” I offered weakly. “Why would I have falsified that information?”  
“I could never help but wonder... if they had forced you to write a reason for your disappearance,” Othello whispered. “Before—before they k-killed you.”  
I blinked. “You thought they... executed me? Why?”  
“You were a legend,” Othello continued, pulling himself up his desk to standing. “If you had done something that ruined the face of dispatch, or were causing trouble—as I assumed you to be, since you could never just abide by authority— I thought they would cover it up by making sure you couldn’t talk,” he mumbled sadly, tears brimming in eyes framed by thick dark lashes. “And then—and then instead, you came back a villain.”  
I grimaced and shut my eyes, taking a long breath in through my nose. The amount of times I had heard that word.   
“Othello. Please. I am not here for any of that. Someone’s life is in danger,” I repeated. “More than one, in fact.” I stepped closer and gently rested my hands on his shoulders, ignoring the small flinch. “Othello, do you remember anybody by the name of William?”  
Othello’s green hair flipped back and forth as he shook his head nervously. “N-no—“  
“Dammit,” I growled. “Othello! Take me to the library!”  
“No, damn you!” He snapped, brushing my hands off and falling against the desk. “You show up here, after decades of silence, a wanted criminal, and just expect me to let you into the library’s top secret files?”  
“Othello,” I murmured, immediately placing my hands over his and trapping him against the desk, leaning just too close for comfort and forcing him to shrink back. It always caught me off-guard, how acceptable it felt to be so close to someone. “Who do you believe? Them, or me?”  
Othello’s eyes shut and his voice came out fragile and afraid. “Who should I trust? Them, or you?”  
“Othello,” I whispered sadly, leaning my head on his shoulder. “Please... don’t make me into the villain they think I am.”  
Silence.   
I stood like that for a few moments. It seemed like hours, each second that passed reminding me of what could be happening to William and Eli. Othello’s body was shaking against mine as he tried to catch his breath, thinking through everything that had just happened... all that had just been said.   
“You’ll have to hurt me,” he whispered after a long pause.   
My heart fell. I circled my fingers around his wrists quickly and cuffed him to the desk, pulling back to look down at him. “Is this your official refusal to aid me?”  
“N-no,” he shook his head quickly, glancing away before meeting my gaze, pain in his eyes. “I mean that you’ll have to make it look like you forced me.”  
I paused. “Othello, you have healing capabilities. I would have to wound you tremendously to even leave a mark.”  
“I can slow that process. If you knock me out, it will give you more time to get away,” he suggested anxiously. “But by tomorrow, someone will find me, and I will have to tell them what happened, Undertaker.”  
My heart broke. Staring down at an old comrade in dispatch, I did not possess the strength to tell him that, hopefully, by tomorrow, he would not remember me. I would not even exist in his history. The statues of me in the library and halls of dispatch would just be ornaments of someone great, a legendary stranger.   
At least, that is what I assumed would happen, if I managed to follow Eli and William wherever they had gone.   
I could only hope that when I returned, so did the memories.   
“Othello,” I murmured softly.   
He glanced up at me with apprehension, beginning to twist in my grip. “Undertaker, please, that’s all I can—what are you doing—“  
What am I if not sentimental? I gently put my lips up to his and kissed him cautiously. It may very well be the last time I ever saw him, the last thing I could take with me to show I ever really knew the reaper.   
My mind went quiet as I appreciated the intimacy, before I forced myself to break away. “Come on then,” I sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> {side note: I hope I haven’t assigned anyone a birthday yet, if I have and messed it up, forgive me. It’s an insignificant detail.} I haven’t posted in like a month, apologies, and I know the last update on the humans was kind of short and also seemed a bit out of left field. The lack of length was just me being unproductive—the revelation has a purpose. Anyways, here’s a nice big update on everybody.  
> Also, concern for Australia? My home was on fire last year and I can tell you it is not fun, and I wish I had money to send to help but I’m a broke uni student. A very consistent reader I know is from Australia; hope you’re alright, fam.  
> Anyways, no fire in these chapters! Enjoy!

Langdon’s sudden confession, half-dragged out of them by London’s pure, overwhelming, sickly friendliness, quieted the newcomer and I slightly. I can’t say I was exactly surprised. Clearly, something more than just the mortician had to have happened to them in order for them to turn out as paranoid and icy as they had.  
Also clear was that it was by violent means that Langdon’s parents had died. Two adults perishing suddenly on the exact same day... even if one was a normal tragedy, such as illness or an accident of some sort... at least one of the deaths was murder or suicide. I just didn’t understand how. I couldn’t imagine a situation where a horse carriage had collided hard enough with something to kill more than one person within.  
Perhaps it was something like a house fire, I theorized. But then, how did Langdon escape? The way that they acted and how they had spoken of worrying for their children told me that it was unlikely there were other caring, involved adults in their life. An aunt or uncle would otherwise have been entrusted with their safety. Perhaps that role model had since died as well?  
We passed from the empty stone into the gloomy tree line, with nothing to show for our progress except another mouth to feed.  
Although, I was curious about London. They reminded me very much of the bodies on the mortician’s table... stitching their wound seemed almost unnecessary. There was such little blood, and what was there was dark and... old.  
And, naturally, as London had laid unconscious on the stone of the church tower, I had pressed my first two fingers into each spot I could think of on their wrist and throat. I had found no pulse.  
As I had not yet revealed to Langdon that I was a time-traveller—which was a sentence I never would have imagined would have applied to me, much less in that I was *kidnapped* through time—I did not want to upset the balance of our collective relationships before I gathered my own understanding of just what London was, and where they came from.  
These were questions for another time.  
Glancing up at the shadowless trees, I noticed I was falling a couple steps behind the other two.  
“Hey Langdon,” I called.  
“Mm?”  
“What’s the plan here? We’re in the forest now—we still don’t have any food or materials, or any water.”  
“Do you guys think the trees are edible?” London murmured, drifting away to tap a branch loosely with their finger.  
“They’re likely not real trees,” I replied. “Everything seems artificial. There’s no nature. There’s hardly any detritus, look,” I gestured. “Somebody just knew that forest floors had dirt and maybe leaves on them.”  
“This is so weird,” London muttered, shaking their head and returning to us.  
Langdon didn’t turn as they rasped a response, shoulders tense as they continued moving. “Eli, I think we ought to keep walking. We cannot sit and starve. Perhaps we will find someone who knows what’s going on, hmm? We found this ball of sunshine,” they gestured over their shoulder at the Californian. “Who says we can’t find another?”  
“Do we want another?” I inquired.  
“Hey! You’d better want another,” London grinned. “I’m amazing.”  
We kept walking through the foreboding forest. The trees were completely still, eating the echoes of our footsteps. London was practically silent, maneuvering in their socks.  
“So,” London began, and it took all of my self-control not to face-palm. “When is everybody’s birthday?”  
Another uneasy silence fell for a moment before, to my surprise, Langdon replied first.  
“July fifteenth,” they answered, voice losing some of its hostility.  
“Oh interesting!” London chirped. “And how old are you?”  
Langdon tilted their head of raven hair back in thought as I took a couple quick steps to walk beside them. “I’m not entirely certain,” they replied. “I believe I’m nearing my mid twenties. I’m likely to be near twenty-three.”  
“Oh, I would have put you younger,” I mused. “But I have a tendency to assume everyone is the same age as me.”  
“How old are you?” Langdon chuckled, icy grey eyes glancing down at me from the side.  
I almost ducked my head in shame. “Uh, nineteen...”  
“Awe you’re the baby of the group!” London laughed, catching up to walk along Langdon’s other side. “I’m twenty-four, actually. My birthday is February eighth.”  
“Mine is in October,” I shrugged. “I’m not even a full five years younger than you.”  
Langdon barked a laugh and clicked their tongue, hooking their arm around my neck suddenly and dragging me up to them, tousling my hair violently as I struggled.  
“Awe, the little baby doesn’t like being young,” they mocked, releasing me with more gravelly laughter.  
Stumbling away, I swiped my sleeve vaguely in their direction. “Hey! Hey! Hey! Don’t bully me!” I commanded weakly, straightening my hair. “I’m old enough to legally drink in Canada!”  
Langdon seemed confused. “Legally? Wot you mean legally drink? You can’t just drink?”  
Oh shit. I had forgotten—in Victorian times, alcohol consumption was probably monitored far less. I stared at Langdon with my mouth open uselessly, panicking.  
“Oh, over in America, we have a drinking age of twenty-one. In Canada, it’s eighteen, and nineteen in some provinces. It’s just an American thing. You know, new countries trying to monitor their citizens,” the Californian shrugged, red satin shirt shifting against their dark skin.  
London’s comfortingly warm eyes caught mine, and I stared.  
‘New countries’.  
I narrowed my eyes at them intentionally, holding their gaze for a moment.  
Perhaps the newcomer was not as... oblivious to Langdon’s condition as they had seemed.  
Likewise, London’s gaze seemed to be analyzing me anew, having learned something they previously did not see, holding my eyes in place in an odd moment of understanding. A single strange second of light in the forest of darkness.  
Langdon in the meantime was nodding in understanding, missing the entire interaction. “Ah, sure, sure. So what is it like, over in America? Both of you, tell me what your homes are like.”  
London snapped their attention away, dark hair fluttering about nervously as they smiled warmly at the Brit. “Sure man. Well, California is very sunny. People don’t really wave to each other on the street unless they know each other... there’s these things called palm trees, and they’re tall and thin trees with big green fronds at the top—sort of like this—“ they spread their fingers outwards in a strange and crunched-up shape. “—and there’s warm beaches of sand with crystal blue ocean, with sun so bright people bring giant parasols to shield themselves.”  
Langdon seemed fascinated. “How warm is it?”  
“It’s so warm we have a thing called ‘nudist beaches’ where people walk around without clothes, and lay in the sun to tan,” London chuckled.  
I couldn’t help but notice that they were letting some more timeline facts slip. Nothing that would let Langdon suspect anything; London was clearly choosing exactly what information was a fatal mistake versus what could be allowed.  
Langdon’s eyes were wide with shock. “They wot?!”  
London simply nodded, and I couldn’t help but grin to myself as well. Yes, our time certainly had its differences.  
“America truly sounds like a fantasy land,” Langdon murmured, with a mixture of unease and admiration.  
London laughed, then gestured at me. “What about you Eli? What’s Canada like?”  
“Well...compared to London and California, from what I know, it’s honestly very clean. There’s less people, so it’s quieter—I’m from the west coast, from British Columbia. So lots of the architecture is very English, as you could extrapolate from the name,” I shrugged. “It’s a bit of a wild land. There’s lots of trees and moose and cougars and mountains. We have poisonous spiders, and the poisonous snakes start further into Canada, in the drier prairies. The people are nice, and—well, we apologize a lot, and as Langdon knows, we produce maple syrup in the east. Many jobs and most of our culture is agricultural in some way, or oil-oriented.”  
“Oil?”  
“They dig it out of the ground with great big slow industrial machines that hiss and click,” I offered.  
“What’s it used for?” Langdon asked.  
Uhhhh, shit. Cars? Tupperware? What else was oil used in?  
“Erm—“  
“They’re thinking they might be able to use it as a cleaner fuel than coal,” London jumped in.  
“Right,” I nodded. “But... we don’t know yet.”  
“Wild animals, huh?” Langdon tapped their mouth in thought as we all kept walking. “Can’t say there’s many of those where I’m from. I think someone told me England used to have wolves, but that they’ve basically been hunted to death here.”  
“Oh, we have lots of wolves as well,” I nodded. “And bears. We even have polar bears—great big white bears that live in the icy north.”  
“Is Canada cold?”  
“Usually,” I grinned sadly. “We mostly get cold rain on the west coast though. Most of the country is in winter with heavy snowfall for most of the year otherwise.”  
“London seems like a middle ground,” London contributed, glancing to Langdon for confirmation.  
With a shrug, the Brit nodded hesitantly. “I suppose so. It is cold and cloudy, but rarely is there lots of snow.”  
Langdon reached out and dragged me out of the way of a puddle of goo as we approached one.  
Wrapping my arms around myself, hands hidden by long sleeves, I turned my attention forwards again. The forest stretched out in long lines of shadow. In the silence, my mind wandered back to the strange jar Langdon and I had encountered. English lettering, but Langdon hadn’t been able to tell me what it said. That was strange, come to think of it... but that wasn’t my primary concern. Why had it existed at all? Where were the other objects? It seemed like such an... accident. Yet we just happened to find it.  
What was it made of? Was it made of goo before it melted? And what was the goo? Did this mean all goo was just melted pots? How bizarre. That couldn’t be right. How could one form of matter just become another?  
And that thing that fell from the sky—  
My skin prickled at the sudden recollection of the vague shape that had seemed to rip the sky apart. Perhaps we had seen wrong, but... upon reflection, it was clear that there was a ball in the storm with a clear downwards trajectory. Was it alive? Was it a beast? Was it another one of us? How many people would we meet?  
And the nagging feeling I couldn’t shake... was it the ghost? This bizarre world seemed like a supernatural product. And what exactly was Myrverth? A ghost, from my traditional viewpoint, was not going to spontaneously reach through a dead person’s memories.  
Although now I had questions about that too.  
Were the people actually dead? London was clearly alive... or... were they? The wound had healed over upon the memories re-entering their body, and then had slowly reopened, the layers of tissue beneath unbroken as the skin peeled back in the shape of a desiccated almond to expose dark, coagulated blood. That is the only wound I had stitched.  
And what a strange first phrase!  
London and Langdon—dear god, how was I not going to fuck up their names at some point?—chatted as we continued walking, while I fell deeper and deeper into my own thoughts. Hours passed. The woods were endless, and seemed to have a much larger expanse than the small city we had left behind.  
Eventually, Langdon halted and held up their hand.  
“It seems to be getting darker,” they murmured. “I think night is coming. We should stop here.”  
“Here?” I asked incredulously. “Just...in the middle of nowhere? Why?”  
“Nothing knows we’re here,” Langdon offered, spreading their arms and spinning in a circle. I followed their gaze. Nothing but trees in every direction. I suddenly felt very claustrophobic. “So we ought to rest.”  
“You mentioned the trees are probably artificial somehow,” London began, glancing at me and taking hold of a nearby branch. “But do you think they burn?”  
Before I had time to shrug, Langdon answered. “I’m not keen on a fire. Smoke and light will make us very easy to spot... we will be warm enough with three bodies lying together in the ground.”  
“In the ground? Jesus Christ, are you doing to kill us?” I muttered, rolling my eyes and sitting down on the hard earth. “My feet are tired.”  
“I’m considering it, mate,” Langdon sighed, sitting a few feet in front of me. “And I meant ‘on’. It’s been a long day.”  
“We literally just walked and chatted,” London replied, propping their hands on their hips.  
Langdon groaned and fell backwards onto the earth. “I know. For *hours*. We’ve been talkin for hours.”  
I glanced around us. Nothing but blackened trees. Conifers, willows, a great mish-mash of one colour, a varied greyscale. “Should we build a shelter?”  
“I don’t see why,” Langdon replied, shrugging their sharp shoulders. “The nights aren’t cold. There’s three of us. We’ll all sleep in a ball. We’ll be plenty warm. There’s nothing to indicate it will rain, or that it’s even capable of raining here.”  
“It will be too late to catch the indication and build a shelter in time,” London offered mildly.  
Langdon sighed, blew a lock of black hair out of their face, and rubbed at their eyes. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take. You two are welcome to build something if you disagree. But we will be moving on within a few hours. God, I’m so hungry,” Langdon whimpered suddenly. “Jesus Christ. Takes me back to my glory days.”  
“I’m also very hungry,” I concurred earnestly, playing with a frayed piece of my sleeve. “Yet, somehow, Langdon, I think that you are feeling a different type of hunger. When was the last time you ate?”  
“I had alcohol for the last three days,” they groaned from the ground. “I haven’t had food in that time. I suppose four days including this day.”  
“See, I’m hungry, but it’s only a single day’s worth of hunger,” I sighed. “Langdon, what happens to you?”  
“Stupid people,” they growled back.  
London glanced to me. “Eli, how long can humans live without water?”  
I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. ‘Humans’. I vaguely wondered if that even applied to this London character anymore.  
“Three days or so,” I replied. “It’s not a long time. Maximum is a week.”  
“So if this is day number two, we need water soon,” Langdon muttered. “Joy. Fuck me.”  
“Later,” London replied casually. The warm pools they used as eyes flared open in embarrassment as they clapped their hand over their mouth. “I mean—! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry man, I’m just so used to joking around with people—ah gosh, I’m so embarrassed!—“  
Langdon and I both burst out laughing, me rocking back and clutching my stomach as Langdon sat upright to glance at the stranger incredulously. “Woah mate,” they quipped between giggles. “I’ve only known ya for a few hours at best.”  
London covered their face with their hands and curled up like a bug. “Ack!! I’m so sorry!! Shut up, shut the hell up you British bastard—“  
We all kept giggling for a while, and then the group fell quiet.  
Langdon was the first to speak again. “Mates, I really feel like we haven’t accomplished anything. Like wot have we done? We’ve gone in circles. We picked up you, London, sure, but Eli and I don’t really know anything you don’t know.”  
I hummed in thought and cracked open my eyes. “I guess all we can do is keep moving and hope we find someone else who knows where the hell we are, hmm?”  
“And try not to drown in goo,” London shivered.  
“Just... it doesn’t feel good to not be making progress,” Langdon insisted, rising to their feet. London and I both looked up at the Brit, framed by trees and bits of exposed smoky sky that was rapidly darkening. Slate grey eyes stared at me, almost demandingly.  
“Don’t you people think something more important ought to have happened by now?”  
London opened their mouth to respond, when a loud rumbling noise resounded from deep within the forest to our left. Panicked, I scrambled away, dragging myself towards London as all of our gazes darted around, desperately searching for a source of the sound. The ground shook; it was so loud and visceral, it rattled my teeth. I wondered if this was what an earthquake was like.  
Langdon, meanwhile spun to face the vague direction of the sweeping vibrations, knives already in hand. Tree leaves trembled around us at the roaring rumble.  
Then, the world fell still.  
The only sound that followed was our collective heavy breathing; the result of our adrenaline surges.  
I locked my eyes on Langdon’s form, tense and on guard.  
“You just had to say something, didn’t you?”


	20. Chapter 20

Othello and I stood in the dark doorway of the massive library, scheming together how we were going to make this work. Night had fallen, and the hallway around us was almost pitch black without any of the usual lights.  
“There’s cameras inside,” Othello whispered harshly to me. “S-so the second we go through the door, it will have to look like you’re forcing me. Don’t worry about hurting me,” he sniffed, pushing his glasses up his nose and straightening his lab coat. “I will heal from whatever damage you can possibly do as long as you don’t kill me.”  
“I don’t have my scythe,” I reminded him, rolling my eyes in the darkness. “I can’t accidentally execute you.” I hadn’t even considered cameras. I wondered how it would affect the memories of me—would seeing my face prevent the loss of recollection? It did not matter.  
“I don’t want the entirety of dispatch thinking I just gave in, or that I gave up at all, so I’m not going to just hand you the keys after you punch me a couple times,” he continued. “I’ll be prosecuted for my cowardice.”  
I ran my fingers over my mouth, watching the moonlight from the window bounce off Othello’s specs in front of me. White crescents glinting at me from the darkness. “Indeed. But I must have a reason for knowing where they are on your body in order to take them from you.”  
“I already know what we can do,” the little reaper grinned, holding his hands up and nearly bouncing with excitement. “Drag me in, put me up to the door, and I’ll fumble with the keys and act like I’m going to let you in because I’m scared. Then, I’ll have a heroic change of heart, and I’ll put the keys in my pocket and insist you fight me or let me go—then you take them when you incapacitate me.”  
His gloved hands clapped quietly with giddiness as he smiled up at me expectantly.  
I eyed him with wariness, considering the plan. “Very well. I do not see any major fault with the idea.”  
His enthusiasm faltered. “I will still have to fight you, Undertaker. It is up to you to overpower me; I will use any weapon that I can, you understand? I know you are capable, but be ready.”  
Spinning away from me suddenly, Othello faced the door and set his mouth in a thin line. When he began to seriously consider what the hell he was getting himself into, I could see him trembling slightly in fear.  
“Othello,” I whispered.  
“Mm?” Glancing sideways at me sharply, he twisted his hands together nervously. “What?”  
Wrapping my arms around his shoulders, I rested my chin atop his head and hugged him tightly. “Thank you for helping me. It is not wasted effort. I’m sorry you must be injured by me in the process... it is not how I would have chosen to have this go.”  
Othello stiffened and refused to relax, and I released him shortly after, feeling oddly rejected.  
“Not a problem,” he muttered back, adjusting his glasses again. “Well, a slight problem, but manageable. So,” he took a deep breath and tugged his lab coat lapels anxiously, gesturing to himself. “Do you want to wrap your arm around my neck, or...? I don’t know, maybe have my arms behind my back..? How do you want to do this?”  
I couldn’t help but smile at his nervous resolve. “Here, Othello,” I chuckled, taking him lightly by the shoulders and shifting him to the right by a couple inches so that he was standing in front of me, between myself and the door to the library. “Stand here. Turn around,” I instructed softly, and he swallowed and did as he was told, turning to face the door.  
“Uh, alright—what do you want me to do with—“  
He made a sharp squeaking noise as I planted my boot on his lower back and shoved him up against the door before kicking him through it. The little reaper disappeared into the darkness beyond the door, wood splinters raining in after him as he and his lab coat hit the floor. Stepping in after him, I assumed my most intimidating scowl and reached to my left, where I knew the lights would be, and switched them on. Bright fluorescents flickered to life. We were in the foyer of the library, an open floor of tables with globes and other bookish artifacts scattered around. Along the far walls and further down the great space in front of us, rows of books stretched out, tall and silent and dark.  
Othello groaned and shifted. I ignored the cameras that were very obviously hovering in the corners, and as Othello began to crawl away, I returned to him and planted my foot between his shoulder blades and pinned him to the floor as I continued to scan my surroundings. I first identified things around me as potential weapons; small bronze statues, pens, etc. Then I shut my eyes and extended a wave of green senses, to ensure we were alone. Plans could always go awry.  
Satisfied, I slid my boot off of the forensics reaper. Bending down, I grabbed the collar of his coat and dragged him to his feet like a puppet, wrapping my forearm around his throat and lifting him off the ground. He kicked and twisted, already crying.  
“L-Let go!” He gasped, barely able to croak the words out as I choked him.  
“Show me where the files are,” I growled, tossing him forwards.  
Stumbling away and rubbing his throat consolingly, Othello blinked at me over his shoulder, flinching when I gestured towards him. “Alright! Alright!” He shrieked, straightening his glasses and limping off into the bookshelves. I followed him closely, kicking lightly at the soles of his feet to encourage him onwards and simultaneously almost tripping him.  
“What do you want from the section?” He asked, voice quivering.  
“None of your concern, I should think,” I mused, kicking at him again and glancing casually at the books as we moved past. Looking up, I could see the great dome of souls preserved in the cubbies in the walls, all pulsing and glowing slightly. Reaper souls. Mine was up there, somewhere.  
Othello led me through the bookshelves, up onto the second and then the third floor, and down a small hallway along the south wall. Everything was oppressively silent, the books devouring any ambient echos around us.  
Eventually, we came up to the east wall of the third floor; a giant slate with a large mural on it, half hidden in darkness. Othello glanced back at me unsurely, and then pulled a key ring from his pocket, which held six or eight keys on it of varying sizes, shapes, and colours. Isolating a small bronze key in his gloved fingers, he slid it into the painting, in the keyhole of a drawn-on door.  
For a moment, I forgot what the plan was, and was confused when Othello shook his head vehemently and suddenly withdrew the key, dropping the entire ring into the breast pocket of his lab coat and sealing it over with a single button.  
“No,” he snapped, eyes wide and terrified as he pressed his own back up against the mural protectively. “I won’t let you in!”  
I stood and watched him, arms crossed, as he fought to still his shaking knees, pressing a palm against the wall for support. “You—you shouldn’t be here! I won’t let you in, and you can’t do anything about it, dammit!” Othello cried. “L-leave!”  
A moment of tense silence passed between us. Then I laughed; I genuinely threw my head back and laughed. I did love seeing Othello try and be brave and commanding, no matter the situation. Never failed to entertain me.  
“uh oh,” I chuckled. “It seems we have a problem on our hands. You forget, m’dear,” I teased, taking slow steps to quickly consume the space between us. Othello whimpered but stood his ground, cowering in my shadow.  
Lashing out suddenly, I grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him into my grip, so I had one arm locked across his chest and my other hand behind his head, fingers spread out into his hair. “I don’t need you to unlock the bloody thing, now, do I?”  
With that, I smacked his head off the wall in front of us with as much force as I could. I was honestly hoping to just knock him out immediately. The little reaper’s knees gave out as he shrieked and slid down the wall, out of my grip.  
I crouched to grab the loose fabric of his lab coat when suddenly he flipped over, twisting his shoulders and swinging his scythe at me. Othello’s scythe was—well, quite small, a little handheld blade—but any death scythe was an unfair fight against nothing.  
Jumping back out of reach, I stood in a guarded position, watching his movements. Othello curled up against the wall, a red bruise already forming on the front of his forehead, teary eyes staring up at me with terror as he brandished his weapon in front of him weakly. “Stay back!” He yelped. “I’ll bury this in your throat!”  
“Please stay out of my throat,” I sighed and tucked my shoulder to the floor and kicked forwards to roll, somersaulting just to the right of the forensics reaper and kicking the scythe out of his unpractised hands. The blade flew through the air, bounced once, and skittered over the edge of the floor to the story below. That dealt with, I pushed up off the floor from my shoulder with my leg still extended from the kick, and managed to immediately straddle Othello and ostensibly separate his legs from his body.  
I grabbed his wrists and dragged his shoulders forwards, forcing him to lean into me as I pulled my arm back, choking him against my left shoulder. My other hand slid up his chest, feeling for where the pocket was. I felt the keys glide across each other through the fabric and fumbled to undo the button, the lab coat being too loose to easily tear the pocket from.  
Meanwhile, Othello thrashed and strained against me, distracting me slightly by slamming his knees into my back repeatedly as he flailed.  
“Fucking god, damn you, stay still!” I snapped, as my fingers slid from the button for the third time.  
“Let go of me, let go of me!” Othello wailed, as I leaned more weight against him.  
I considered how impossible it would be to escape from this position. As I leaned more weight into my shoulder, I crushed him against the wall more, suffocating him and stripping him of fighting options. I had his hands very precariously cuffed in mine, and he was so much smaller than me—  
At the same moment that I had this thought, Othello managed to rip his hands free with his writhing. I had leaned so much weight up top into my shoulder to keep him still, I had lifted my hips slightly. Shoving off of the wall, Othello slid downwards on his lab coat, leaving nothing behind but the white fabric in his place which was soon snapped away with him as he vanished from underneath me.  
I punched the floor in my desperate attempt to grab the coat. Perhaps I didn’t need to hurt him as much, if I could just get the lab coat from him.  
Ah, but I had to also stop him from grabbing the phone.  
Hm.  
Othello was running, fleeing towards where his scythe had slid.  
I caught up to him in moments. Right before he had the chance to follow his blade, my fingers wrapped around his wrist and jerked him back towards me. I twisted his arm up behind his back and pushed him against the metal railing that barred the drop to the second floor, hard enough to bruise his sternum. Or so I had thought; instead, I heard a crack, and winced as Othello screamed.  
No time for apologies. Sliding my arm under both of his against his back, I lifted him back and held him awkwardly above the ground, the angle surely hurting his shoulders.  
“I will put you against that again and again until you can’t even make a noise,” I growled in his ear. “Give me the keys.”  
“No! No! Put me down!”  
I did as I was asked and dropped him onto the railing again. Coughing, Othello clung desperately to the metal, leaning on it heavily as he turned to face me.  
I gently placed my boot upon his damaged chest and pressed him lightly against the railing. His hands fell to wrap around my ankle.  
I hardened my glare. “Give me the keys.”  
Othello whimpered and shook his head.  
Applying slightly more pressure, I grit my teeth as Othello cried out, fingers digging against the leather of my boot. “Give me the keys!”  
Still, he shook his head, tears of agony rolling down his cheeks and dripping off his jaw.  
I kicked him once, and he rebounded off the railing with a shrill cry. Immediately, I spun on my heel and kicked him again, and the railing snapped with a metallic wrenching sound. The bent railing allowed for Othello to slip through the new gash in the iron, and he plummeted to the floor below.  
Jumping down after him, I landed in a crouch next to his broken body. He wasn’t even bleeding anywhere yet.  
“Keys.”  
“N-no!” He wheezed, clutching his chest and flipping onto his side away from me. I went for his pocket, certain that I could just take the keys now, but yet again his hands lifted to fight me.  
Sighing in irritation, I kneeled on his stomach and pushed his arms up over his head, using my other foot to step on his wrists and pin him down. My hands made short work of the button, despite barely being able to see it in the shadow of the bookshelves. The keys were retrieved. I felt such relief; the fight was over. The metal was cold in my palm as I stepped away from the little reaper. Now, I just needed to figure out how to keep him pinned there, so he couldn’t call anyone for help.  
I glanced around. The solution occurred to me in hardly any time, and I walked down the rows of bookshelves alone in the darkness, until I was about seven tall shelves deep.  
Certain that Othello was still suffering on the ground in the last alley, I jumped up and kicked off of the bookshelf in front of me as hard as I could. My braid lashed at my back as I landed, crouched and ready for something to go wrong. The bookshelf groaned and stuttered. The wood creaked, cracked, and cried, and then slowly, the rows of books leaned away from me and collapsed against the next shelf, which then snapped and collapsed against the next.  
2...3..4, 5, 6...  
I winced as the last domino crumbled over the scientist.  
Othello was a reaper, sure, but I doubted that he was strong enough to lift seven shelves’ worth of weight, especially in a damaged state like he was.  
The library fell silent once again.  
Satisfied, I spun the key ring on my finger once and leapt back up to the third story. Rubbing the little bronze key between my thumb and forefinger, I approached the painting and slid it into the lock on the door. I turned it, and the library was again ignited with sound, a harsh click resonating out into the darkness. The wall groaned deeper than the shelves had, and with the hissing of hidden pistons, the entire mural slid aside about two feet.  
Turning sideways, I vanished into the inky darkness beyond, tossing Othello’s keys back out after myself and jamming the switch to close the wall behind me.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally wrote this at 5 AM so fingers crossed. I’ve been super busy with exams and a bunch of life management crap, but I hope y’all can enjoy this quick update.  
> By the way, how many of you knew that “Adrian”, the name the fandom gave the Undertaker, actually means “dark one”? I’m not complaining, I mean, we really hit the nail on the head with that one, guys.  
> As well, I have realized I might as well toss this in here— I have a tumblr account that you guys can follow if you like. There’s no pressure to, at all, and I know very few people may be interested, but I basically just post memes and art. It comes to mind because I posted a sketch of Othello that I am very proud of somewhat recently. I also figured that if more of you from this platform join that, we could even engage in some like, side-hilarity with the characters from the stories, ‘incorrect quotes’ style. And it gives you a chance to actually talk to me more directly, should you be interested.  
> So my name on there is hemlt. Originally an inside joke on the name hamlet. See you there, maybe.

What exactly I expected to figure out, I was unsure. I needed to find a way to access Eli, who had vanished into... ‘the past’. Theorizing to myself while hiding in Othello’s cupboard, I had contemplated several possible options for what may have occurred in the basement of my shop. One was that Eli had acted entirely autonomously, and that Antireapers had nothing to do with this at all... but if that were the case, I had no idea where to begin looking. And under that umbrella, to be more problematic, if Eli had simply vanished into the reels completely of their own accord, then Eli had ridiculous amounts of power and was now, theoretically, wreaking havoc somewhere in their desperate attempts to get back to their timeline.  
The amount of sheer willpower and skill the human would have needed was not something that I had picked up off them. Not to discredit Eli; they were incredibly resolute when they decided to be, and unfortunately, exceptionally resourceful. But their crippling anxiety and insecurity would likely have prevented them from being able to so carefully control the memories long enough to slide through—and I was confident Eli made it completely through to the other side, else when the reels exploded, the walls of my basement would have been painted with the mortal’s insides.  
So, this led me to believe that Grelle had raised a very valid idea; that an Antireaper, or being of similar ilk, had been interfering. A demon would not have bothered, and the only other theory I had was that a reaper who had deserted even farther back than I had descended into madness and took some experiments on humans too far.  
I couldn’t help but feel a pang of... guilt, and fear, at that idea. It made me feel directly responsible because... how could I even fight that kind of enemy with any kind of conscience? A reaper, forced to the brink of insanity by dispatch, kidnapping mortals for the sake of their own experiments.  
Oddly plausible, for me.  
Thus, I prayed it to be an Antireaper. I could fight those, both mentally and with a higher level of skill and experience in combat.  
A reaper would be too much of a wildcard.  
The goal was to figure out how to track a potential Antireaper. I vaguely recalled the old tactics used but... I had tried to put so much of those days behind me, it was actually difficult to remember details. If I could locate the Antireaper, I would hunt it, shake Eli from its grip, deposit Eli safely back in the mortal world, go back, and kill the bloody parasite.  
That was, assuming Eli was still alive. Which they simply had to be. I had to believe in the slim chance that Eli had survived and was continuing to survive in the hands of whatever took them in order to motivate myself to try and save them.  
I couldn’t give up.  
Not this time.  
I sighed and snapped the book in front of me shut. Rather inconveniently, I did not have all night to sit and ponder each page of each document within each case. It irritated me greatly that I might be missing crucial information by merely glancing at the wrong line, but I was forced my constraints to move forwards.  
The restricted section of the library was... well, perfectly medium-sized. Dispatch’s job was not to keep secrets. They happened rarely, and they happened by accident, but the collections of the three or four events that the reapers really had to bury were all filled with countless reports and a strange mixture of rumours and facts.  
About half of the documents in the room contained information pertaining to me, mostly because my desertion of the force caused such a stir. Due to that disaster’s connection with the Antireaper case, the amount of paperwork had nearly doubled.  
I stared at the wide shelves looming in front of me.  
Nothing like an ancient library to make a tall man feel short...the monumental task, all laid out in front of me, in the flesh, as it were.  
The visuals were intimidating. Rows and rows of dusty, blank spines stared out at me. I had always wished for the chance to read the older ones, the ancient scandals, and yet, I had never found the time. I had always assumed that there would be a day for me to relax and read, but, now that I was here, the ticking of the clock deterred any temptation.  
Muttering to myself in Latin about how they should have bloody named the bloody books in the case of a bloody emergency, I scanned the shelves again, my head tilting back as I glanced up and up and up. Surely there must be a better way to do this.  
I was here to find my books. My case file. Where would it be? If only I could easily recall where I had stuck the damn thing.  
Driving the heels of my palms against my eyes in frustration, I sighed through my nose and turned away from the shelf, pacing a couple steps back and forth before an idea struck me. I gasped, eyes flying open as I stared at my hands.  
Suddenly excited with new potential, I blocked the world out and took a slow breath in, studying the mental image of the tips of my fingers.  
I forced myself back to that day.  
I wrote the last word.  
I penned the last period.  
My hair was slightly shorter, I was slightly stockier. I was angry. I was afraid. And I was, more than anything, relieved, at the sight of the words on paper.  
I closed the file.  
Very carefully, I watched the path of my fingertips as they slid across the scratchy and cold surface of the parchment.  
With extreme control, I slowly pulled my mind back into the present, and imagined my hands as they were, spread out in front of me. I assigned my fingerprints a colour; bright ghostly green, the same as the magic that accompanied my scythe.  
And with that, I sent out a pulse of black to null the library around me. Using my senses, I followed it up with a wave of this green, out from my hands to sweep the room.  
I was lost in immense concentration.  
Before long, bright spots of the same phantom green ignited in my periphery, burning with such intensity that I nearly opened my eyes.  
My fingerprints were still there. After all these years, hiding in the dusty shelves, my fingerprints remained, the emotional intensity of that day perpetuated there on the pages, folded into a book. I now could see which papers I had dealt with.  
Curiously, I couldn’t help but notice a strange bit of interfering feedback. A small wave of shy dark blue, emanating from a few smudges on the very same pages, near my fingerprints. My heartache deepened. Othello’s hands—he hadn’t been lying.  
Snapping my eyes open, I practically ran to the other end of the shelving unit, launching myself into the air and climbing the edge until I reached the collection of tomes and file folders that I had located. I dragged them towards my chest with new ferocity; I was getting closer.  
Spreading them all out across the floor, I began to read. It was difficult. I swallowed down the emotions that sprang back to the surface after having been buried for years. At one point, I gently caressed my own four-page letter of resignation. I had been so young when I had written those words, so scared and naive and alone in those times compared to where I was now. If only I had known what was to come.  
What was I doing now, I wondered? Would I someday look back on this with triumph, and amazement, at how I had somehow barely managed to save the last mortal I would ever harm? Or....  
There was no or.  
Either I looked back on this day with triumph, or I would not have the chance to reflect.  
This was not the time for a mental crisis. Every second dragged me closer to when the heads of dispatch and security would show up, and while I would, frankly, kill every reaper who tried to stand between me and my mission, I would simply rather not.  
Hours flew by before I found pertinent information. Amidst my various flashbacks, I managed to locate an article of mine that detailed how we had found the epicentre of the Antireaper activity. The young Antireaper who had led the revolt had built a globe, a fake but livable world in a mysterious realm outside of reaper contact; we had figured out how to break through.  
The point of the big hollow marble was originally apparently to house humans, who would be collected en masse and then harvested. Information we had gathered from Antireapers captured and tortured was that an agreement had been made. All Antireapers delivered every prize to the marble, and at the end of an indiscriminate period of time—when Antireapers began to fade of starvation—the food would be divided among them. Those who had performed at a higher level than the others would get the highest percentage, by a steep amount. This method had incentivized maximum efficiency, which had been the Antireapers’ only hope of accomplishing their mission. Being inherently weaker than reapers, they simply had to act fast.  
I shuddered and continued to read.  
It was simply a spell, as I had imagined. A cursed Latin incantation, some fancy hand movements, and then a splitting apart of reality with a scythe that had taken over approximately 100 mortal lives. The number only correlated to the strength of the scythe, and was not directly-related as a key to the marble itself, but something about that requirement still made me wince a little.  
Luckily, those were amateur numbers.  
I had reaped *millions*.  
With all things considered, I had no time to waste.  
The chant was lengthy, and used ancient words that even I could not parse or translate. Most was understandable Latin, but some switched into Aramaic and even Gaelic languages—who had written the bloody thing? I remembered, vaguely, being frustrated and confused by it the first few times as well, all those years ago. It had taken me days to learn it fluently and completely. I prayed now that most of the pronunciation had remained familiar, even after all this time.  
I had no choice but to try.  
I wasted another hour refamiliarizing myself with the script and forcing myself into a state of extreme calm. Dangerous tranquility, opening myself up to the influence of all the souls consumed by the curved metal of my blade.  
I summoned my scythe. I barely felt the words leave my lips in the silence, and felt numb as I lifted my palm to face the ceiling, arm outstretched. At a critical word, I flipped my hand over, sending a pulse of energy into the ground. It made a terrifying cracking noise. I was unused to the adrenaline of this kind of reaper power. The next set of lines was spoken by a shell echoing my voice, and I flipped my palm again. Yet again, a burst of crackling energy shot forth, louder than before.  
I repeated the gesture, and felt the floor at my feet shatter. Three more times I cycled through the motions, each firework of power more deafening than the previous, until I felt something in the air snap, and wind blasted at my face, whipping my braid back. I dared not open my eyes as papers at my feet were hurled behind me. From my other hand I transferred my scythe, balancing it carefully across the flat of my palm, forcing every ounce of willpower I had to concentrate on the exact movements of my fingers as I pulled the portal towards me, haloing the blade of my scythe with the violent storm. Like a necklace being draped over a bowed head, I concentrated on luring the portal even closer, edging it towards me by curling and uncurling the fingers that were around the handle of my scythe, until the blade hovered deep inside the tugging depths of time.  
I grit my teeth and raised my arm slowly, wind still lashing at my face. I was thankful once again that I had forsaken my loose robes.  
The tip of my scythe caught on the other side of the portal, as if there were a wall. It offered me the leverage of a pickaxe, and I closed my fist around the bone of the handle tightly, knuckles aching. I shouted the last words and jumped, swinging myself forwards into the void as the portal tried to swallow my scythe, and dragged me along in the process.  
The library was suddenly empty again.  
The portal destabilized—in my wake, it immediately snapped shut, leaving nothing behind but the dishevelled books sprawled across the floor, and a few short, white hairs from where the very tail end of my braid had been snipped.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I know  
> I’ve been gone so long my account logged out ;-; it’s been a month and a couple weeks? Almost two months? Super short update I worked on today— listen, we all know, the world has *temporarily* gone to shit. Stay healthy, eat vitamin C, stay inside, wash your hands, wash your groceries. I had to move my whole life from one city to another in twelve hours and now I’m in my friend’s house?? What is happening. Anyway I’m getting settled, hopefully a bigger update tonight/at some point tonight or tomorrow morning. I will be writing it, I know what happens in these next few chapters. There’s gonna be an update from the humans, an update from the undertaker, and an update from myrverth. I appreciate your patience and I have ARRIVED BACK TO ENTERTAIN YOU ALL DURING QUARANTINE, there is no better a time than the present for fanfiction.   
> Anyway super short update more is coming bye

The librarian paused, the key that had been extended forwards habitually meeting only empty air. Morning sleepiness was immediately banished. She glanced at the entrance more sharply, and then quickly withdrew, adrenaline spiking instinctively.  
Who had left the door open?  
Creeping in, she glanced around in the darkness, but dared not call out. She drew her pocket knife, unsheathing it from its plastic case and clutching it tightly, hands shaking in front of her chest as she moved through the library. The bookshelves stared back. It was the first time she had felt unease in the library since she had arrived there.   
Suddenly, as she turned left, the damage was revealed. Gasping, she stepped back into the shadows and stared. An entire row of collapsed shelves; a disaster, an entire collection of snapped wood and splayed books   
Could this have been an accident? Did one of the ancient units snap and crumble? She recalled the forced-in door as her eyes followed the trail of destruction up to the balcony of the dimly-lit second floor... near the reserved section of the....  
“Shit,” she muttered, spying the shattered railing.   
Glancing around herself once in fear, the librarian fled back through the dark shelves towards the door, screaming for Grelle.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s 5 AM and i have no circadian rhythm left so please enjoy the bi-product of fatigue-fuelled mania

The three of us fled on foot through the trees. London kept up well despite seeming to possess the same flimsy and squishy body type as Eli, and for not having any shoes. Eli ran a similar pace, and thus, I was forced to slow my step in order to keep flanking them. The sound we had heard— the deep groan that had made the very earth around us shudder— well, I had never heard anything like it.  
Damned if I wasn’t unnerved.  
My knives stayed in my fists. Whatever had caused such a sound was not to be taken lightly.  
After a time, Eli stumbled on the slightly loose boots and lost rhythm. I was quick enough to catch them on my arms, doing my best not to spear their torso on my blades. London screeched to a halt just ahead of us. I noted with some unease that they were not breathing hard the same way Eli and I were. By my logic, they should have been panting. But perhaps I had missed something, or was simply wrong in my assumptions; now was not the time to bother with details. It was either accept the stranger or do not, and until I had a valid reason why I couldn’t trust this person as much as Eli, then I could not bring myself to abandon them.  
Not yet.  
I dropped Eli forwards, allowing them to fall onto all fours as I turned back to scan the forest behind us. It all appeared the same. Suspicious and flat.  
“What is it?” Eli gasped, startling me. “What do you see?”  
“What do your elf eyes see?” London echoed, chuckling to themself strangely.  
I turned back and glanced at them both with confusion as Eli snorted  
I blinked. “Have I missed something?”  
Eli’s shiny eyes flickered up at me and London glanced away, both of them snickering foolishly.  
“Don’t worry about it man,” London shook their head. “It’s an American thing, sorry.”  
I stared back suspiciously. “Eli is Canadian.”  
“They’re attached buddy,” London offered, dropping humour from their face as their dark and shifting eyes focused back on mine. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m really not trying to start anything, Langdon. Are we safe?” They gestured to the forest behind me.  
“Yes,” I snapped back tensely, without glancing away. “At least, as far as I can tell. Nothing has pursued us, at least nothing that I can see.”  
“My, you have an unnerving gaze about you sometimes, Langdon,” Eli panted, still sitting on the ground. “Relax a little bit, eh?”  
After another moment of tight silence, I forced my shoulders to relax forwards out of fighting stance and finally dared to tear my eyes from the American.  
“My bad,” I offered, taking a badly-needed breath and collapsing next to Eli. I stabbed my blade into the ground. The Canadian flinched. London did not.  
The American seemed as tense as I was, still scanning the trees that stood on guard from whence we came. Eli and I were still catching our breath.  
After sitting for a moment in the strange twilight, panting and fiddling anxiously with shirtsleeves and fingernails, I cleared my throat. “So, either o’ you want to take a guess as to what that was?”  
Eli threw their pale hands in the air, black sleeves flying past their fingertips. “I’ve no idea what the fuck anything is in this world. Where the hell are we? What the hell is happening? And why us three specifically?”  
“Well,” London nodded their head and stared at the ground with raised eyebrows. “We don’t exactly know if it is just us three, do we? We can’t guarantee that no one else is here.”  
“London,” I murmured. Both Eli and the American tended up again.  
“Mm?”  
I smiled slightly and let my eyes shift to their face. “How did you get your wound?” I asked, tapping my sternum with my finger roughly where their scar would be.  
“Ah,” London breathed out, whilst Eli stared very pointedly at a particular patch of dirt. “Well, I... was... being hunted, by... someone who wanted to, uh—“ they swallowed thickly. “Well, I guess kill me. Um... a man named William. I was walking through London, and I was alone, which was um...stupid of me...” their dark eyes jaded over, gazing blankly at the sky. Their voice dropped to a whisper for a moment. “...I should have asked... anyway. He caught me in a corner of a courtyard, and I—I was alone and I—I couldn’t get away—“ the American’s voice ...broke.  
I swallowed, suddenly overcome with the urge to sympathize. London continued before I could stop them. “I couldn’t—I couldn’t get away—and he, um... he stabbed me... in the stomach, with a pair of g-garden shears, and I just, I—everything went white.”  
London faltered and cried, breaking off into a sob.  
I sucked in a breath I did not realize I was holding back from. A tear slid down Eli’s cheek as well.  
“What happened next?” They whispered.  
“I woke up here,” London croaked out. “And you—you two saved me. Sorry,” they sniffed and covered their eyes, turning away from Eli and I with a shaking voice. “I just haven’t— I haven’t had a lot of time to process it—“  
“I am so sorry,” I murmured, rubbing my face with my palms. “I am so sorry. I do not know what I was thinking, I was— I was under the impression that it was a scar, from longer ago—“  
“Dude, it’s alright,” London coughed and turned back to the conversation. “It happens. I’m sorry I’m making such a big deal out of it. I’m really not bothered by you asking or anything. Although,” they chuckled sadly. “I’m curious— you thought it was a scar, despite the fact that it was an open wound when you found me? Again, not casting blame, just curious...”  
I suddenly became uneasy. How much had we told London? What should I answer with? I glanced to Eli unsurely. The blonde was staring back at me with equal alarm in their eyes.  
“... just a lapse in judgement under the strange circumstances,” I offered finally. “Forgive me.”  
“London,” Eli asked, nervously running their fingers through their fair hair. “I also have a question for you, if ... if you don’t mind.”  
I glanced around us again. Nothing but dusty ground and stark, silent forest.  
London sniffled again and nodded, pulling a dark strand of hair from their crescent-shaped mouth. “Sure thing man, what’s up?”  
“You are so American it hurts,” Eli put their fingers to the bridge of their nose and laughed once. “I just had a question... um... about...”  
London seemed too distracted to notice Eli’s strange faltering, but I narrowed my eyes as the Canadian stalled, and then seemed to think better of themselves. “... I just had a question about... about whether you used to do sports as a kid or not.”  
Even the blind American couldn’t miss the awkwardness of the question.  
“Hmmm,” they murmured. “I mean, I’ve done... a few... nothing special though, like nothing competitive. Nothing hardcore. Just random sports, like, I’ve done badminton and soccer and of course baseball at school... why do you ask?”  
“Oh, you just, um, seemed to not be as out of breath as me earlier,” Eli chuckled and clicked the toes of their boots together, the copper buckles shining in the grey lighting. “So I was just curious if you were an athlete.”  
I almost missed the strange jerking motion London’s shoulders made. The awkward laugh that followed only made me more suspicious; both Eli and London were acting strangely, holding back information, or something. I did not know what to do about the mounting tension—meanwhile, I couldn’t help but think of my own last memory before waking up in the field whilst London told me their story.  
A demon...  
What an unbelievable, fantastical story. Now it seemed certain that I was the only one who had met the creature. I supposed I had information of my own to hide.  
London rolled their head back and wiped their damp eyes one final time, banishing the last of their tears for now. “While we’re on the topic of random questions, it seems apparent to me that somehow both of you have come in contact with the Undertaker, right?”  
Just like that, the tension snapped and my heart dropped.  
“I KNEW it!” I shrieked, rolling forwards onto the balls of my feet and ripping my knife out of the ground before springing towards them.  
Eli reacted immediately. “Langdon, NO!—“  
I was too fast. London’s eyes widened as they gasped and shifted back. I tackled them, pinning their shoulders to the ground with my forearm before flipping my knife under their throat and digging the edge into their dark skin.  
“Langdon—!”  
“Stay back!” I barked sharply at Eli. “If you know what’s good for you! How do you know the mortician?” I hissed, narrowing my eyes down at London. “Are you on his side?”  
“H-his... side?” London squeaked, hands shifting on the ground as they stared up at me in shock. My legs were wrapped around their waist, keeping them still.  
I growled lowly and twisted my wrist so that the tip of my knife bit into the flesh of their throat. London made a small noise of pain high in their nose and cried out weakly. “Eli, help me!”  
“My patience is not to be tested,” I snapped, my black hair dancing around the edges of my vision. “Are you on the mortician’s side or not?”  
“Langdon—“  
“Do not make me hurt you too, Eli,” I hissed over my shoulder, eyes never leaving London’s.  
“I’m not—I’m not here to hurt you,” London rasped. “Please! Take your knife awa—“  
“That’s not what I asked,” I growled, applying my pressure, indulging in my torturous habits and relishing the catharsis of finally releasing my suspicion as London twisted and dug their fingertips into the earth.  
“I’m—the Undertaker rescued me—I was—living with him—“  
I shook my head. That wasn’t what I had wanted to hear. My heart was already tearing in two. I liked London... what if they were in cahoots with the... whatever he truly was? What if London was another one?  
“Did he torture you?” I rasped.  
“What?! No! He would never—“  
I screamed and drew my knife back. London’s paralyzed eyes widened further.  
“Langdon, NO—!”  
Suddenly, something hit my shoulder, hard enough to knock me off of London and take me to the ground. I twisted and roared, trying to get a grip on any of Eli’s limbs, all of which were thrashing impossibly fast with panic. My knife slipped from my grasp somehow as I shoved Eli off of me. I lunged at the Canadian, who bolted to their feet and danced out of my reach. “Langdon! Stop this!” They shrieked.  
“You should have stayed out of it!” I screamed back. “I trusted you!”  
Straightening up, I spun on my heel and grabbed my knife up off the ground, taking off after London, who had began running off into the forest. They only made it about ten feet before I tackled them again.  
Eli leapt onto my back, tiny hands wrapping around my throat and leaning back as hard as they could. Lowering my shoulder, I slid Eli off to the right. The blonde hit the ground and grabbed onto my wrist; my knife arm. I raised the blade up and dragged Eli up into sitting as they cried out in fear.  
“Let go!” I snapped, but Eli slid their knee around my hips from the front. I jerked back. I wanted to free my knife. “Let go!”  
“Stop it! Please—!” Eli kicked forwards off the ground, pushing my wrist up over arm as they tightened their grip on my knife hand. It twisted my shoulder uncomfortably and I fell back, allowing for Eli’s movement instinctually to avoid a dislocated limb.  
Somehow, in the ensuing wrestling, Eli managed to pin me on my back at a bizarre angle, my knees bent underneath me and my knife held to the ground.  
As my head hit the ground, Eli leaned forward over me. I glared up at the bright crystals fearfully staring back down. Suddenly, my panic snapped me. I was pinned down, staring up at uncomfortably familiar shiny green eyes. Fine and pointed features hovered above me, pale skin disappearing into black robes. Mortician’s robes. White hair ghosted across my cheek, flashed across my vision. My arms felt weak— the world at the edges of my vision darkened. I was back in the... back in the shop...  
“N-no,” I gasped, tilting my head back.  
“Langdon?” The Undertaker asked, hands pinning my right arm above me on the floor as he cut my palm open. “Langdon!” His voice was wrong. This was a nightmare. Where was I, what was happening? I couldn’t move—  
“Get off,” I gasped, tears rolling out the sides of my eyes. I could barely find my voice past the painful lump of fear in my throat. “Get off of me!” I kicked and writhed at random, completely disoriented and confused as to what muscles I had and what muscles I didn’t. He was too strong. I was going to die after all. “Get away, get away, leave me alone!!” My voice rose in pitch. I couldn’t control anything. Where was I? “I can’t breathe!” I shrieked. “I can’t breathe! Don’t put me back under!” I wailed. “Don’t—don’t touch me! Please! Please, please, I beg of you— I don’t want to go back under!” I sobbed hard, so hard it hurt. My heart was going to deafen me. I thrashed again, cried some more, and opened my eyes one final time before my blurry world went black.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not in this particular chapter, but soon enough, there’ll be some more physical angst to entertain everyone ;) I’m trying to balance my mind and continue to find motivation to write. It’s not that I don’t want to or don’t know what to do with the story— it’s getting over the mountain of self-doubt that stands in my way every time lmao. Thank you all for being such a wonderful community to me.  
> Stay healthy <3

I coughed once and rubbed my throat. Dark, deoxygenated blood smeared across my palm.   
“Langdon?” Eli’s high voice cried, desperately clinging to the flailing arm with a knife on the end of it, pressing it into the the earth. “Langdon!”  
The Brit’s voice rose in a strange screeching panic. “Get off of me! Get away, get—away!! Leave me alone!!” They begged raven hair spreading out against the dirt as they tilted their head back. “I can’t breathe!” They wailed, gasping for air as if they were drowning. It was an extremely disturbing sight, and I had to resist the urge to cover my eyes. “I can’t breathe! Don’t put me back under—don’t touch me!!” Langdon screamed, voice going gravelly with strain as Eli fought to keep the knife still, a panicked and bewildered expression on their face. “Langdon—“  
“Please, please, please!!” Langdon wailed, wetness gliding down their cheeks as they thrashed. The desperation in their cries twisted my stomach and I flipped forwards, onto my elbows and knees, trying to force my brain to come up with some way to help.   
“I beg of you!” Langdon gasped. “I don’t want to go back under!!”  
The thrashing and fighting became twitching and writhing. Shuddering breaths ripped in and out of Langdon’s body and their grip on the knife was lost. Their body started to jerk and shake, like they were being electrocuted.   
“Langdon? Fuck!” Eli snapped, suddenly withdrawing their white-knuckled grip. Sitting back on their haunches, the Canadian twisted and lifted Langdon’s shoulder, rolling them onto their side and pinning them there, sitting awkwardly on the Londoner’s hip bone.   
Wide, panicked green eyes met mine over Eli’s shoulder. “Help me! Get their head!” Eli called.   
I shook myself and crawled over quickly.  
“What’s happening?!” I gasped, sitting on the ground in front of Eli and cradling Langdon’s head to hold it still. Foam was leaking out between their cracked lips. It was pink with blood. “They’re foaming blood, Eli, what’s happening?!”  
“Seizure,” Eli muttered. “Langdon’s having some sort of seizure.”  
“Blood is coming up—!”  
“They bit their tongue,” Eli assured me, bending down to peer at Langdon’s mouth and adjusting their glasses. “I can’t risk clearing the foam yet, if I put my finger in there it might get bitten off. We don’t need two emergencies,” they continued muttering to themself.   
I glanced at the forest around us. I suddenly felt very vulnerable. “So what do we do?”  
“It should be over in a minute,” Eli shook their head. “We wait it out. Oh my god, we need an ambulance...” they sighed, eyes wide with despair and confusion.   
Langdon continued to twitch. I wrapped my hand around their forehead and over their eyes, huddling over Langdon to bring their head to my stomach, into my lap to hold it still.   
“Make sure they stay tilted on their side,” Eli commanded. “Don’t let them choke on anything.”  
“I didn’t know people who had seizures foamed!” I gasped. “That’s—terrifying!”  
“Indeed,” Eli clicked their tongue. “But look. It’s already ending. Langdon is twitching less.”  
It was true. The Brit’s wiry body was already spasming in smaller efforts, with longer moments of peace between each shudder. I made sure to keep a firm hold on Langdon’s head, weaving my fingers into the shaggy, tangled hair and gripping tight.  
“Keep watch on the forest,” Eli advised. “I don’t feel comfortable without our fighter.”  
I scanned the trees, but still there was nothing.   
“How long do these things last?”  
“If Langdon is somehow brilliantly strong, they’ll be conscious again in either five or ten minutes. They won’t be at full capacity for a while though. Probably out of it for the rest of the day, for sure,” Eli muttered. “We’re going to have to stay here for a while, and maybe slowly walk.”  
I took a deep breath in through my nose. Langdon was going to be fine.  
“Eli,” I murmured, brushing some of Langdon’s hair back. “I’m curious; when I said we all knew the Undertaker, you didn’t seem too surprised. And you speak of oil... and understand references from twenty-first century media.”  
Eli froze up, lips tightening as I lifted my gaze to look at them. I turned my attention back down to Langdon, using my sleeve to carefully wipe away some foam. “Just who exactly are you, Eli? Those robes of yours look awfully familiar to me.”  
“Why don’t you tell me who you are first?” Eli whispered tersely. “Langdon was right. The mortician isn’t to be trusted.”  
I glanced up sharply. “What? What do you mean by that?”   
Eli sighed and glanced down at Langdon. “I don’t know that this is really the appropriate time to discuss this, London.”  
“It might be our only chance, while Langdon is unconscious,” I argued. “Please, Eli, tell me what’s happening! Why did Langdon attack me?” I hissed, then dropped my aggression and gazed at the frail Canadian with sympathy. “...What did he do to you?”  
“Certainly nothing of the like of that which he did to you!” Eli snapped back, hackles clearly raised.   
I paused. “And how exactly do you know what it is that he did to me?”  
Eli stammered and hesitated for a moment. “I... came after you,” they whispered. “I must have. The Undertaker has mentioned... things.”   
I blinked. “After? I...” a sudden wave of dizziness overtook me. I slowly shifted my eyes down to Langdon’s pale and scarred face, gently running a fingertip over the line that mimicked the Undertaker’s. “...How long have I been gone?” I whispered.   
After a quiet moment, Eli exhaled and their shoulders slumped forwards. “I... I don’t know, London. I’m sorry. The Undertaker never sat down and went through it with me. I only ever gathered bits and pieces... I was the last of three. One person he loved, and one person he...” Eli’s eyes flickered down to Langdon’s form. “‘Tried to apologize to’, and... failed.”  
“So... wait, Langdon came after my time with the Undertaker? Gods, I’m sure I’ve heard that name somewhere before, though, and... and certainly in that timeline...” I whispered. “What the hell!”  
“Look,” Eli murmured, forming their mouth into a thin line and leaning towards me, glancing off into the forest. “I don’t know what the fuck is happening, okay? I’m gonna tell you right now, Langdon knows you too. They didn’t tell me from where, but they completely changed when you came conscious. London, I need you to tell me the truth, right now, and then I’ll tell you something in return, alright?”   
I nodded.   
“Okay,” Eli murmured. “Did you die on the blade of a death scythe?”  
“Holy fuck,” I gasped. “Okay, so you know what the Undertaker really is?”  
“Based on Langdon’s comment earlier, they do as well. Or at least... they suspect it. Langdon has a deep, deep distrust for the mortician, London,” Eli warned. “Deeper than my own.”  
I glanced up again. “How deep does yours run?” I asked quietly, instinctively tightening my grip as Langdon’s body twitched again.  
“Mine runs up my arm and through my stomach,” Eli growled, before both of us were startled by Langdon twitching and thrashing again.  
Bloodshot iron grey eyes flickered open and glanced up to me.   
Eli leaned forwards and gently pulled Langdon’s jaw open.   
“Langdon, can you hear me? I’m sorry, it’s Eli—I’m just checking that you’re not choking on anything. Okay? You’re okay, you’re gonna be fine.”  
My head was swimming. I tried to focus on keeping Langdon comfortable as they slowly woke up, intermittently losing consciousness for a few seconds with Eli crooning reassurances to them the whole time. First, Langdon attacking me had been scary enough, immediately followed by a strangely gory seizure—like nothing I had ever thought a seizure to be—now Eli was implying that the Undertaker had... had what?  
My mind flashed back to the evening in the shop, where the Undertaker had sliced apart a coffin in a rage. The image of the scythe slicing...  
Eli clearly knew what a death scythe was.   
How had they come across the weapon?   
I shuddered.   
Best to shelve those questions for now. We had more pressing matters to deal with...  
“Langdon is going to be vulnerable for a fair amount of time,” Eli murmured. “Seizures are essentially the brain resetting itself somehow, or trying to. They’re gonna be kind of foggy. Langdon, Langdon, can you hear me?”  
The bloodshot eyes fixed on me again, and a weak noise emanated from deep in Langdon’s throat.   
“Sit them up,” Eli instructed. “Slowly, carefully. Langdon can you sit up?”   
With vague, dissociated moans, Langdon tapped at their mouth weakly with calloused fingertips. I gently wiped my sleeve across their lips again, but Langdon shook their head. “Innit?” They squeaked, glancing between Eli and myself.  
“In it? Nothing is in your mouth, Langdon, you bit your tongue,” Eli murmured. I stayed quiet, running my palm up Langdon’s forehead and back over their hair as slowly and calmly as I could possibly make my muscles move.   
“I wish we had some water or something,” I whispered.   
Eli shook their head, adjusting the thin wire frames of their glasses again. “It wouldn’t do Langdon any good right now, best not to put anything in their mouth.”  
“Right, yeah...”  
Langdon began to struggle. While very weak, it was still a chaotic effort, and their head lolled forward suddenly.   
“Hold them,” Eli warned, shifting forward on Langdon’s lap.   
I tucked my arms under the Brit’s and pulled them to me, wrapping my hands around each other to seatbelt Langdon against my chest, encouraging them to lay their head back against my shoulder.   
“We need an oxygen mask,” Eli muttered, clicking their tongue with frustration. “Langdon can you hear me? Do you know what year it is?”  
“Langdon probably didn’t know what year it was before the seizure either.”   
“Shit, you’re right,” Eli growled. “Hey. Langdon. Can you tell me your children’s names, please?”  
“They have children?” I hissed.   
Langdon coughed once, head twitching on my shoulder before they groaned some slurred words out.   
“One’vm—E—han—othr—tommy bl-bl... mm. Then there’s... tommy—lil’, anni hink ‘ere whaagirl name c—c—“  
“They sound like they’re on drugs,” I lifted my eyebrows. “Jesus Christ.”   
“Just keep your eyes on the forest,” Eli advised, eyes still jumping around behind thin wire frames. “I don’t feel safe.”


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shit starts to go down my darlings. enjoy.

****“Thought you could sneak around?” A voice called.  
William spun on his heel, shears up to guard his chest.  
“Oh! Well—perhaps I ought to apologize,” he breathed in relief. “I didn’t entirely intend to invade—unfortunately, I have no idea where I am. Eh, where are you, if I might ask?” He inquired of the voice, spinning slowly in the castle hall. “And... what is this place?”  
“Do you remember how you got here?”  
After a pause, glancing around into the shifting shadows behind the pillars, William shook his head. “Only darkness.”  
“So you do not remember me, then?”  
A shorter figure suddenly appeared on the carpeted steps. Big bright orange eyes blinked at William expectantly, surrounded by blue-green flesh and thin curls of long black hair. Charcoal clothing folded over itself in layers before pooling on the floor, like a strange gown that was too loose. The bottom seemed to be shifting.  
Will blinked hard, trying his best to maintain professionalism. “...sorry, no. Should I?”  
“Hmm,” the creature rubbed a humanoid hand across its mouth, narrowing its giant amber eyes before gesturing for William to follow. “Then come. Sit and eat, and we will talk.”  
“You will have to pardon my suspicion,” Will replied, firmly gripping his shears and keeping his feet planted. “I’m in unfamiliar territory. I’m sure you can appreciate the danger that places me in.”  
The creature stopped, face half-hidden in the shadow of a pillar as it turned back slightly, frogfish face breaking out into a warm smile. “Of course, of course. Please, feel no pressure to follow me,” it hummed, casually disappearing into the darkness of the castle beyond. “But there is nothing outside but emptiness waiting for you.”  
William felt a subtle spike of panic at the thought of being left alone, or perhaps passing up his only opportunity of understanding what was going on. “Wait, please,” he replied evenly, pushing his glasses up slowly and resigning himself to his fate. “Please… Will you tell me who you are, at least?”  
There was a moment of silence before the cooing voice echoed in the hall again. “…You can call me Myrverth. Come along, William.”  
“H-how do you know my name?” Will demanded, taken aback.  
When no one answered him, the reaper cursed, gripped his shears tighter, and quickly scurried after the creature.****

~~~~~

“Chritht,” I groaned, the fuzzy world slowly coming into focus around me.  
“Oh!” A voice I knew. A voice I liked. “Langdon!”  
“What?” I snapped, cursing with confusion as my heavy tongue slurred the damn word. “The fuck you want?”  
“Language,” a second, rounder voice chuckled.  
“Thatth not my name,” I snapped back, head still blurry.  
Crystal clear eyes suddenly sharpened into focus above me.  
“Ah!” I cringed away, moving gingerly out of necessity. “Eli… you look worried. You altho look too clothe to me.”  
“How do you feel? How’s your tongue?”  
“It hurtth,” I stuck it out into the air. The pain was dull, but present, alongside the rhythmic heartbeat of agony in my skull. “I blacked out…I blacked out, diddni?”  
“So you are aware of the seizures,” Eli breathed in relief and fell back, sitting on the ground next to where I was laying. “Bullet dodged there. Are these frequent? Why didn’t you warn me?” They demanded miserably.  
“I am an impenetrable fortrethh,” I giggled, rubbing my temples sluggishly. “…Thorry.”  
“You’ve been muttering nonsense for… I don’t know, man. Some random amount of time between probably half an hour to an hour, fading in and out of consciousness,” London shrugged, standing farther away.  
I scowled. “They not… My blackoutth don’t take that long,” I insisted. “Never.”  
“You’re dehydrated, malnourished, and sleep-deprived,” Eli muttered, running the heels of their hands up their face. “I’m surprised you’ve recovered so quickly.”  
“Ugh,” I replied, closing my eyes again and taking a deep breath. It scratched in my throat. I was thirsty… stupidly thirsty.  
“London,” I rasped, senses and memories slowly coming back to me. “Tell me how you know him. Before I try and hurt you again.”  
“Based on your reaction, I’m assuming you have some bad blood between you and him. I would like to preface this by saying that without knowing any details, I don’t side with him. As of right now, I side with you, alright Langdon? I promise.”  
I was surprised by how genuine the Californian sounded, but the earnestness did not banish all my suspicion. I stared up at the ashy trees with narrowed eyes and remained silent.  
London took a breath. “The Undertaker visited America, and happened to stay at an inn I worked at. The building burned down. He pulled me from the fire, and… through getting to know each other… we decided it would be best for me to come back to England with him, and live as his apprentice.”  
It took me a few seconds to register London’s story through the fog in my mind. “He… never… tortured you?”  
London shook their head. “Of course not. The Undertaker is weird, but he has a heart.” “London,” Eli murmured sadly, in soft warning, as I burst into gravelly chuckles that hurt my throat and my head.  
“What? What did I say?” The American demanded, nervousness growing.  
“I always wonder,” I laughed breathlessly. “How people find good in those who possess none. Somehow, you fools find the hearts in the heartless, and London, I can tell you this, mate,” I advised, slowly sitting up and levelling a calm glare at the Californian. “It’s goin’ to get you killed. And not by me…” I lifted my hands. “But by him.”  
London jerked back, looking offended. “The Undertaker isn’t going to kill me!”  
“And how would you know?” I hissed.“How would *you* know?” London answered, taking an aggressive step towards me and gesturing. “How would you know?”  
“Because I’ve seen it before,” I replied evenly, shaking my head slightly in an effort to clear my vision as I allowed a new venom to penetrate my words. “I’ve lived it before, you bloody American. Devoting oneself to someone violent and cruel by nature ends in nothing but bloodshed.”  
“The mortician… he saved me from certain death,” London argued. “Why would he save someone he only intended to kill?”  
“Killing is never the intention,” I snapped back, losing patience. “The intention is to save, to repent, to spoil, to love. To prove themselves worthy of your love and attention,” I rubbed my neck idly, feeling the ridges of the scars along it. I glanced back up at London. “The mortician saved me, too, mate. I got hit by a carriage, and he took me back to the shop and dressed my wounds, fixed a broken rib, fed me, let me sleep in cushions. The morning after that night, he stabbed a pair of tongs into my throat and left these scars,” I murmured. “A-and why should I believe you?” London stammered, tears brimming in their eyes. “What makes your story any more correct than mine?”  
“I believe your story,” I growled, “because you have no lines on you. You ought to believe mine, because I’ve got the markings to bloody prove it!”  
The effort of intensifying my voice caused the pain in my head to swell and pulse, and I winced and pressed my hand to my temple.  
Meanwhile, London had swivelled to glare at Eli, who had so far watched the entire exchange with tense humility.  
“And you?” The American demanded. “You’re gonna tell me he… he hurt you too?”  
Eli sighed. “London, I… Listen. I know the mortician has some… some redeeming qualities, but…”  
I snorted.  
“…But he did… he has done some bad things to me, as well.”  
London looked broken at Eli’s words, and slowly glanced down at Eli’s right hand, where the raised white scar ran up into their sleeve.  
“Did—did he do that to you?” London whispered, voice quivering, fingertips hovering near their mouth.  
Tucking their hand behind their back instinctively, Eli opened their mouth to respond, but I interrupted.  
“‘Course he did. The Undertaker is a monster, London, driven insane by his loneliness. Don’t you see that? Lonely people are dangerous. The mortician is not—“  
“At least the Undertaker never leapt at me with a knife!” London shrieked suddenly, eyes ablaze with hurt. “Who are you to pass judgement on who is and isn’t dangerous?! I bet you fucking deserve the scars on your face!”  
Eli sucked in a startled breath.  
I levelled my glare with London. “Do you think the Undertaker don’t deserve his, then, mate?”  
Pulling in their lower lip, London’s tears finally spilled over, and they spun on their heel in a flash of red silk. “I don’t need this!” They cried. “I don’t have to take this from you! I’ll find my own way home!”  
And with that, the American took off into the forest, sprinting away from us and wiping furiously at their eyes.  
Eli hesitantly moved to follow, reaching out a hand after London’s fleeing form. “London, no! Wait!”Their crystal eyes glanced uncertainly down at me. Raising my eyebrows, I shrugged and gestured vaguely towards the fugitive. “Make your choice, dear Eli. I ask nothing more of you, but I am not going to chase.”  
Eli paused, brows creased in concern, and pulled their lower lip into their mouth anxiously, staring after London for a few more seconds. The last flicker of colour disappeared into the oppressive forest as they vanished. Eli eventually sighed and shuffled back to me, staring dejectedly at their boots.  
“Be grateful you have them,” I offered, softening my voice. “Consider them a gift, and move on.”  
“We can’t leave London alone,” Eli whispered.  
Still slightly stung, on more than one layer of my inner self, by London’s remarks, I sighed and shook my head gently. “I’m not wasting my time chasing someone that touchy about the Undertaker,” I riposted. “I could have allowed the differences in experience. Shit happens, people change. But I don’t want to be walking on thin ice all the time.”  
“I understand,” Eli murmured sadly. “I just wish… I just wish this all were simpler!” They wailed, falling to their knees next to me and pressing their hands over their eyes for a moment.Unsure what to do with myself, I slowly reached my arm up and patted Eli’s shoulder.  
After a few moments of tired silence, Eli sniffled and brushed my hand away. “That doesn’t matter right now—how’s your head? How are you feeling?”  
“Like Hell itself,” I chuckled. “It hurts, but I feel pretty alive.”  
“Alive is a step,” Eli offered. “We should probably stay here until you’re compl—“  
“Shh!” I commanded sharply, sitting bolt upright and holding up my hand. Eli fell silent immediately. Their eyes went wide and they glanced around at the forest all around us.  
I heard it again, and this time, I could tell Eli heard it too; screaming, distant and echoey.  
It sounded like my name.  
“Son of an absolute whore,” I growled, before I launched to my feet and took off in the direction London had run.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god, you guys are champs for sticking through the typos. I don't do a lot of editing, so im terribly sorry for when autocorrect hits or my fingers miss a key ;-;  
> thanks for continued support and patience ^-^ enjoy

Langdon swore and took off after London. The sound of the American’s shrieking voice froze me in my place momentarily, before I stumbled to my feet and sprinted to follow Langdon. I had no hope of keeping pace, and the distance between us grew as the trees flew past.  
Suddenly, a flash of red flickered into view. London was on the ground ahead of us, on their back with their hands over their face. A shadowy figure, tall and covered in thick rolling smoke, was advancing quickly, a staff of some sort raised above its head.  
Langdon was far ahead of me, and was just reaching the pair as the shadow man swept its weapon down towards London’s cowering form. Leaping forwards, Langdon summoned four small knives into their left hand, almost as if by magic, driving all four blades straight into the shoulder of the figure as they wrapped their legs around its waist. The shadow stumbled but stayed upright, weapon gliding harmlessly through the air a few inches above the American. A long dagger appeared in Langdon’s other hand, and they drove it deep into the shadow’s solar plexus.  
I entered the scene and did the only thing I could think of to help; I grabbed London’s arm and dragged them out of the way.  
“It’s William!” London shrieked. “He’ll kill you! Something’s wrong with him!”  
I turned back in time to witness the shadowed form of the reaper William throw Langdon from himself. The fight was eerie; the only sounds were Langdon’s sharp breathing, and scuffling footsteps as they scrambled to their feet. The smoke creature was producing no sound; only suffocating silence, like the rest of the world.  
“Langdon!” I cried, voice rising with panic beyond my control. “It’s a reaper! You can’t match him!”  
“I’ve fought a reaper before,” Langdon snapped back, long dagger still in their right hand. “I know what I can and cannot do.” They lowered their voice and narrowed their slate eyes dangerously, scar bending with their glare. “One of you bastards was enough.”  
The Not-William turned to swipe at Langdon, who bent backwards to dodge the scythe. Oh my god, it was a scythe, Langdon could have no idea of knowing—  
As the shadow turned, the four knives in its shoulder glinted against the monochromatic lighting. I realized I could see part of the way through it’s smoky flesh, and yet, the knives hovered within the semi-corporeal shadow, as though imbedded in some invisible muscle. I stared, mesmerized, desperately attempting to observe anything helpful or useful about the shadow. Langdon hadn’t passed through, but the blades could stab. So it acted mostly like a normal body. The smoke, coiling and writhing in a William-shaped cage, thickened to black and dispersed to grey at random. As I watched, I couldn’t help but notice a strange, oddly shiny white thing fluttering within the abdomen. I tried to get another glimpse, to confirm my suspicions, but opaque smoke obscured my view.  
“How the fuck is Langdon that fast?” London gasped, on their hands and knees on the forest floor and breathing hard.  
Langdon repeatedly swept their arm in front of them, blocking various strikes from the shadow William. Spinning the dagger in their hand, Langdon swiped forwards, forcing the reaper to dodge backwards.  
I was confused as well. I recalled how quickly the mortician could seem to move—a characteristic I had attributed to his unnatural strength. William should have shared these skills, as a reaper, and yet, the shadow was giving ground, faltering and missing its attacks.  
My heart fell suddenly. “Is Will a cheap fighter?” I demanded. Without waiting for a response, I bolted forwards. “Langdon! He’s faking you out!”  
Langdon took a leap forwards and sunk the dagger straight into the shade’s head, withdrawing it sharply with what looked like the force required to pull it from real flesh, despite the slice carrying no sound of rending. A fatal blow.  
The shadow paused, and then whacked Langdon in the side with its staff, shaking itself and rolling the shoulder with knives in it as Langdon landed hard on the ground a few feet away, coughing once and rolling onto their stomach. Miraculously, they still maintained their grip on the dagger, knuckles white around the hilt. The shadow Will took a casual step forwards and raised—what I now assumed to be a spear— above Langdon.  
I shrieked and threw my hands up, unsure as to what I was doing or what was happening. As the spear fell, I wrapped my hands around it and dragged it forcefully off-course. The spearhead, bathed in smoke, bit into the ground between my legs as I landed on my ass, hands still wrapped around the handle. That was going to be a bruised tailbone later.  
“Eli!” Langdon coughed from behind me. “What the bloody Hell are you thinking?!”  
“I don’t know!” I wailed back, grip on the spear—which was longer than I was tall—tightening as the wraith pulled it back, effortlessly withdrawing it from the earth. I was dragged along behind the weapon as the Not-William adjusted its grip.  
Suddenly I was up in the air. The spear was pulled tight against my throat, the back of my head stuck against the shadow’s shoulder. The figure felt real enough. Pushing against the spear with all my might, I kicked my legs and lifted myself enough so that the handle was across my chest rather than my throat. The pressure was bruising.  
“Aim for the middle,” I squeaked. “There’s something in the middle!”  
Langdon stared up at me, startled, before rolling back onto their haunches and struggling to their feet, dagger levelled in front of them. “You’re kind of in the way of that, mate!” They snapped.  
My back started to tingle. An innately uncomfortable sensation accompanied being pressed so tightly against something so unnatural. I could feel the smoke shifting against my clothes, rolling up and down with a bizarrely soft and creepily petting-like tactility, and I did not appreciate it.  
“Make him let me go,” I begged, running out of air.  
Langdon darted around the side of the shadow. The figure spun, dragging me with it to face the threat, and I could see Langdon’s eyes flickering back and forth, trying to conceive of a way to attack without stabbing me.  
“Hey!” A voice called from behind, and a black pinecone struck my forehead as the Not-William spun the other way.  
London stood a few meters away, hand retracting in fear.  
“Ouch!” I yelped.  
“Baseball in highschool, huh?” Langdon called, and suddenly I was discarded, dropping free to the ground as the dagger buried itself in the middle of Will’s back. The figure paused, stuck in a position that indicated a shriek of pain, despite no noise coming forth. London and I watched in shocked silence as Langdon grit their teeth and pulled the blade sideways, bisecting the smoke horizontally.  
A fluttering white ribbon shot out into the air, as if Langdon had hit it with a tennis racquet.  
Yes!  
Before either of the others could say anything, I leapt to my feet and wrapped my hand around the single memory.  
The forest around me vanished into blackness. My stomach flipped, like I was falling, and suddenly I landed in a crouch in a cemetery, having just dropped from a nearby building top.  
Suddenly, I could see London, red silk shirt and long hair loose down their back.  
I swept my scythe forwards—garden shears, long and spear-shaped—in such a way that I clipped London’s collar, pinning it to the ground with such inhuman force that the mortal in front of me was flipped onto their back. Dazed, London blinked up at me. “Wha—“  
“I fail to understand how Grelle possibly let you slip by so easily so many times,” I sighed, pushing my glasses up irritably. “But the problem will be rectified.”  
“William,” London gasped, staring up at me with dizzy fear. “Fuck.”  
“Foul language will not dissuade me,” I replied, bored of the situation, and intent on not being distracted. I had a minimal amount of time before the mortician appeared, I imagined.  
London suddenly grit their teeth and curled up, kicking at the handle of my shears, knocking them from my hand for just a moment. In that time, London pulled the shears towards themself, audaciously choosing to staple them farther into the ground. I felt my face twist in a snarl of frustration, as it took me a second to actually wrap my hands around my scythe again and yank the blade from even deeper in the ground than I had put it. I had no idea how London had managed to gather the strength to even budge the shears; the feat should have been impossible.  
London, meanwhile, shrugged out of their shirt, leaving it stapled beneath my scythe as they rolled forwards, looking to dart past me.  
I kicked them back down. London’s bare flesh hit the gravestone behind them as they yelped.  
“You should be thanking me,” I muttered. “As this will be quick and painless.”  
I lifted my scythe up and stabbed it downwards, aiming for London’s soul. I could sense it writhing, strangely uncomfortable where it rested in their midsection. London lifted their hands, eyes wide with panic, but my scythe connected anyway. For a moment, nothing happened, and then a single drop of blood hit the ground.  
I pulled the shears back, and London’s eyes glazed over with death. The mortal body slumped forwards, inanimate, as the shrieking soul burst forth, white reels rearing up and writhing in agony.  
“Tsk, such violence,” I murmured. It had never been a requirement, for this mortal’s passing to be so difficult, but now the bloody mortician’s meddling was going to cost me my energy. This soul wasn’t going to come easily.  
Then, something happened that shocked me to my very core; the memory reels in front of me started to spin, no longer paying attention to me as they formed an instantaneous tornado above London’s corpse.  
“What the—“  
Suddenly, a giant black spider leg seemed to burst forwards out of the swirling mass of light. Before I even had a chance to lift my scythe in defence, the jet-black appendage struck me in the chest and pinned me to the ground. Dazed, all I could make out was a giant set of glittering amber orbs and greenish skin, before I blacked out.  
I stumbled forwards, dropping onto my knees. I was still clutching the memory fragment, though it was scrunched up and bent awkwardly in my fist. Stunned, breathing hard, I stared at it. A scorch mark marred its glinting surface.  
“Myrverth,” I whispered.  
The memory pulsed once in warning. Acutely aware of the reel’s sharp edges, I released it immediately. It drifted a foot into the air above my palm, and then immediately exploded, sending a giant wave of light and energy radiating outwards in a blinding blast so deep and sonic that it shoved me backwards.  
I landed on my ass a few feet away. Glancing up sharply, I flicked hair out of my eyes and looked for everyone else. London was behind me to my right, eyes glazed and wide, also displaced from their feet to their posterior. Langdon was sprawled on the ground on the opposite side of the blast from me, on their stomach, dagger knocked from their limp hands and head down on the ground, unmoving.  
The shadow-reaper had vanished.  
In his place was a puddle of black goo, as still and smooth as glass.  
My breathing was the only sound.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is a pretty long chapter! Sorry for the pause, just adjusting to new life and online classes as well as maintaining my own household. This chapter has what I think is a really neat concept that I’m very happy to explore, hope you all will enjoy!

…“Then you must know of one of your kind in particular… a man who goes by the name ‘Undertaker’, yes?” Myrverth inquired casually.  
William felt his chest tighten with suspicion. He glanced up from his glass, watching the strange creature sitting across the table from him as he slowly tilted the end up to finish the dark liquid off.   
“I know of him, indeed,” Will answered carefully, narrowing his eyes and setting the empty glass down gingerly.  
Myrverth tilted its strange head and smiled. “Come now, be a little more pliable, William. What do you know of him?”   
“That he is a critical ex-member of dispatch under heavy surveillance and a man of great influence,” William replied, making his suspicion clear in his voice as he leaned one arm on the table and adjusted his glasses. “And that he has dark controversies plaguing his history, and that certain unsavoury figures might want to harm him if given the chance. But,” he added with a pointed glare, “not much more than that.”  
“Do you think of me as an unsavoury figure?” Myrverth pouted, glancing down at itself before grinning widely. “What about this figure?”  
Suddenly, a familiar redhead leaned over the table and ran their tongue over their teeth in a flirtatious grin, gloved hand toying with the rim of William’s glass.   
William recoiled slightly. “Seduction is of minimal use against me, I’m afraid,” he murmured apathetically, pushing his chair back and rising to his feet. Grelle’s expression dropped into one of brief worry.“Very well, very well, I am sorry for toying with you,” Myrverth replied, immediately withdrawing back to their chair. Grelle vanished in a puff of smoke, and the slightly shorter, slightly amphibious figure replaced them. “Please, William, accept my apology. I can see I have made you wary, and uncomfortable. I shall make you a deal,” it smiled politely as William paused, hand poised on the backrest of his chair.“I will not ask a single further question of you tonight, and you may ask any and all questions you may have of me, yes? Come. Do not be hasty to wander into the world of isolation beyond. Surely, you wish to know more.” Myrverth laced its fingers demurely in their lap of swirling black fabric and waited patiently.  
William hesitated, for just a moment, before sighing and sitting back down in the chair.  
“On the basis of principle, if you break your word at all, I will leave, is that understood?” William shot another icy glare across the table.  
“My goodness you have eyes as sharp as knives, William,” the creature chuckled, before gesturing to the empty wine glass. Dark red liquid spiralled into existence within the crystal container, and William eyed it with growing unease.  
Sliding down slightly in its chair casually, Myrverth leaned its head on one hand and smiled. “Understood.”   
****  
~~~

“What was— what was that?” London gasped.  
“A memory,” I replied.   
“Well I know that,” the American answered back, venomless.  
I turned to shoot them a confused look. “Well why’dja ask, then?”  
Without waiting for a response, I forced myself to my feet and dashed across the small clearing to Langdon, who still hadn’t moved.  
“I meant,” London sighed, slowly picking themselves up to follow me. “Why did you grab it? Why did it explode? Did you just kill William?”  
I shook my head, laying a careful hand on Langdon’s shoulder. “Look, I don’t know everything, aight? It wasn’t William. I think it was—I think it was Will’s last memory, somehow animated, so either William is walking around here somewhere without a memory or that was the last shred of him. Why it would have been discorporated from him, or how, I have no idea. We got bigger problems right now,” I urged, grabbing Langdon’s wrist and feeling for a pulse. I breathed a sigh of relief when the faint heartbeat met my fingertips.  
“What would you like me to do?” London asked, standing beside me and biting their nails anxiously.   
I blinked up at them a few times, the stress sitting on my shoulders nearly making them ache. “I—I just have no idea,” I breathed, eyes wide. I shook my head. “I’m going to just—I guess see if I can wake Langdon up. Otherwise, we’ll have to carry them, as we’ll have to move on. We’re all dangerously dehydrated, Langdon’s probably got the headache of a lifetime, and I’m not about to drink… that,” I nodded to the puddle of Not-William.  
“Move on to where?” London whispered.  
I closed my eyes and exhaled through my nose. “None of us know,” I replied after a minute. “You’re welcome to stay and die alone in the forest if you prefer. Langdon, can you hear me?” I leaned down and gently put my hand on their cheek, tapping lightly and then shaking their shoulder.  
A small groan answered me.   
“The sounds of misery,” I laughed breathlessly. “Better than no sound at all.”  
“Trust me, silence is better than the sounds of true misery,” London murmured, dark expression suddenly coming over their warm features.  
I rolled my eyes and leaned back, sitting on my heels. “My goodness, you really must have picked up some characteristics from the Undertaker. Are you done being edgy?” I snapped. “Because frankly, you’ve not been particularly helpful in any way, and if Langdon is dead, your last words to the person who just saved your goddamn hide for what’s practically the third time since you’ve met them will have been something along the lines of ‘you deserve those scars on your face’. So maybe take a minute and figure out where the hell your priorities lie, hm?”  
London, seeming stunned, stood in silent shock for a moment. I turned my attention back to the motionless body in front of me, both my patience and my anger rapidly dwindling. “Come on, Langdon. Wake up, we have places to be, water to find. How’s your head?”  
Slowly stirring back to life, Langdon’s hand twitched as they touched their temple with their fingertips, movements slow and stiff. Their eyes were still closed, brow creased in quiet agony. Small efforts for breath caused their shoulders to rise and fall.  
With another few groans and squeaks of discomfort, Langdon finally spoke.  
“…Am I still bloody alive?” They muttered.London laughed uneasily, sudden warmth breaking through the eerie silence of the forest. “You sound displeased.”  
“I’m… not exactly thrilled,” Langdon murmured back, face still pressed against the ground. “I think I’ll just lie here forever.”  
“If you don’t get up, Eli’s gonna make me carry you,” London chuckled. “So, for both our sakes, it’s imperative that you get up, my dude.”  
“Sorry, does *your* head feel like it’s been hit against a wall a couple of times?” Langdon demanded mockingly.  
“I only know what the rim of a bell would feel like, sorry,” London shook their head.   
“You just lay there until you can move, Langdon,” I interjected. “But try not to make it too long. If you feel like you’re healing, we can wait, but if it gets harder and harder to get up the longer you lay there, let me know.”  
“I’ll be fine, maple-sucker,” Langdon rasped, slowly struggling to lift themselves to their hands and knees. Sucking in a breath, the Brit’s palm fell to clutch at their side, where William’s scythe had whacked them.  
“Yeah, that’ll be a bit of a bruise,” I winced, eyes following. “Can you walk?”  
“Yes, yes, of course,” Langdon snapped half-heartedly, slate eyes flashing at me bitterly. “Just give me a damn moment.”  
London stepped past me and held out a hand, upturned in an offer of assistance. I watched curiously as Langdon paused, clearly debating between a prideful reaction, or a courteous one. London’s eyes betrayed nothing, but their tightened lower lip indicated tension, and hope for a positive outcome. Halted there on one knee, Langdon’s eyes lifted, steel grey slicing into reserved pools of warmth as their cracked lips were pulled in to a thin line. From my perspective, in that half-moment of pause and debate, the air was positively electric with stress and potential. It was brief torture to wait through.  
Finally, Langdon’s scarred palm met London’s tanned wrist, and the Californian helped pull Langdon to their feet. The entire forest seemed to breathe a silent sigh of relief.  
“How’s your sorry arse, huh? This Will fellow didn’t tag ya anywhere, did ‘e?” Langdon demanded, in a voice somewhere between gruff and sharp, using their hold on London to drag them slightly closer before circling them quickly and glancing them over. To my surprise, London did nothing that indicated a fearful reaction. There was no flinch. Just from watching the odd observation, I myself was tempted to pull my arms into my chest, curl up my shoulders a little, and lean away. But London just smiled at the Brit and tilted their sunny head.   
“Not really!” They chirped. “He didn’t chase me very subtly... he came from the left, so I had a couple seconds to run and scream. He hit me with the handle once but never managed to nick me with the blades... I’m glad it seems to be the same for you,” they sighed in relief, glancing up Langdon’s body much the same.   
“No reaper has gotten the best of me yet,” Langdon shook their head. Then, glancing at me somewhat hesitantly as I struggled to my feet, Langdon said, “...I am now figuring we all know what a reaper is, ye?”  
London and I both nodded.   
Out of curiosity, I entered the conversation. “Have you ever seen a death scythe before, Langdon?” I asked, admittedly somewhat nervous for the response I might receive.   
With a pausing glance at the American, Langdon made a quick and dismissive popping noise with their mouth. “‘Course. Big shiny curved one, with a skeleton on it, wrapped in thorns. Either of you seen that one before?”  
What a clever manipulation of a question. Langdon was clearly unsure as to whether London was aware that the Undertaker was a reaper as well, or if I even was, and thus didn’t want to reveal too much. I idly reminded myself of the danger of clever people.   
Unable to remember whether I had seen the mortician’s scythe in London’s reels or if the memories were mine alone, and not wanting to accidentally let slip something that I, in theory, should not know, I stared at London patiently and waited for their answer first.   
Glancing at me for equal approval, London nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, of course! Of course!”  
“Myself as well,” I muttered pensively. “So, good. We all are aware of the Undertaker’s... nature.”  
“Wait, I have another very important question,” London suddenly interjected with a wide grin, spreading their hands. “Y’all ever seen a frickin chainsaw scythe?”  
Langdon looked confused. “What’s a chain-saw?”   
“Oh man!” London clapped their palm over their forehead and grimaced. “I’m stupid. Anyway, Langdon, picture a big red handle in your hands, and you hold it like this,” London mimicked the position. “And there’s a big metal arm with dozens of tiny knives, all of which point upward, and it spins very fast. So you can cut through things like trees or,” London winced, “people.”  
I was horrified. I hadn’t ever seen a chainsaw scythe in person before. I didn’t even know that was a thing! I had figured all scythes appeared much like the mortician’s... yet here was William, with garden shears, and now London was describing a damned chainsaw.   
I shuddered at the thought.   
Langdon looked enthralled. Slate eyes wide, Langdon breathed a low whistle before smiling unnervingly. “I want one!”  
Reaching up, London clapped a hand on Langdon’s shoulder. “You should definitely never be allowed to have one, my dude,” they laughed, before withdrawing.   
The only seed of resentment I nursed at the fact that London’s touch was not rejected so violently as mine had been was nullified by my immediate relief that no more tension was built between the pair.   
Glancing uneasily between the two of them, I shook my head and stepped through their gazes. “It’s lucky we have the lovely puddle of William to orient ourselves in the forest,” I noted. “Although, it’s also unfortunate that he became a puddle at all, as it has reduced the chances of me risking a drink of this... charmingly plentiful goo to a strong zero,” I sighed and put my hands on my hips as I stuck the toe of my boot into what once was a shadow reaper. Drawing it back, I watched with vague scientific curiosity as the liquid stretched and peeled itself back off the surface of my shoe with the sound of tearing Velcro. “We ought to keep walking,” I advised, as the pair approached. “We have to get out of this forest soon. We have to find something new.”  
“Hey, have we come up with any ideas as to what the heck that horrible noise was a little while ago?” London questioned anxiously.   
“My theory is that Langdon taunted it out of the earth itself with the power of pure idiocy,” I mused, earning myself a light kick to the back of my thigh, which I danced away from.   
“Don’t blame this on me, maple-sucker,” Langdon rasped, clearing their throat. The sound only reminded me of my own aching thirst. “I just ‘ave instinctive timing.”  
“Do you think the sound could have been William spawning?” London murmured uneasily, stepping over the puddle and beginning to walk off into the trees.  
Jogging for a moment to keep up with the vanishing flash of red silk, Langdon and I glanced at each other before I spoke.  
“I imagine not. I don’t see why it would have ‘spawned’ days after us.”  
“Oh good, so the sound is nothing new appearing. Could it have been made by some sort of giant creature?” Langdon muttered, rubbing the side of their head with their palm in idle frustration.   
“Well,” I hesitated. “I didn’t say it’s not something new. I just don’t think it was William. Will would have been transported here when London was, for the fact that London was kidnapped immediately after being stabbed.”  
London blinked, warm dark eyes glittering amidst the fullness of the forest as we walked. “You think we’ve been kidnapped?!”  
I glanced at Langdon, who seemed to be forcing severe neutrality into their features. It was the same expression they had made when London first awoke. How unnerving.   
“I mean... I assume someone took us here,” I offered nervously. “What did you think happened?”  
Shrugging, London turned back to face ahead. “I don’t know. I just sort of thought the earth opened up and swallowed Will and I somehow I guess.”  
“Langdon,” I murmured shyly. “Can I ask you to elaborate on how you got here? Or what you remember?”  
With a slow sigh, the Brit dusted something off their arm and pulled their lips right for a moment. “Yea, sure. I was walking down an old alley in London... I had just left my home, where my children were.” With an uneasy glance at London, they added, “I had left the Undertaker there as well. I went for a walk to clear my head and eventually the roads... I must have got lost, because I didn’t recognize where I was all of a sudden, and I saw a big stone fountain in a yard between two buildings. I’d never seen such a thing before. So I went up to it, and when I looked into the water, I had no reflection... at least, none that I could see. Then it felt like something was drawing me in, or like something pushed me down, and I fell into the fountain and... blacked out.”  
“How deep was the fountain to make you black out? Or did you hit your head?” London asked incredulously.   
I interjected. “Langdon was probably forced unconscious by whatever process used to drag us here. I also blacked out as I was...” rescued? “...transported.”  
“And what exactly happened to drag your sorry arse here again?”   
I glanced at London, who was watching me idly, with no small amount of unease.   
The American rolled their eyes. “Would you two stop looking at me like wounded dogs? Christ! I don’t care about your weird Undertaker stories right now! He... did what he did,” they trailed off, voice unsteady. “I can’t help that, nor fix it. But you don’t... you don’t have to hide your stories from me.”  
My eyes awkwardly searched out the ground again. “Um, okay... well, I was sneaking away from the Undertaker in the middle of the night, like, early early morning. I went down the steps into the basement towards... well, you both know what memories are. I can grab them and sort of temporarily disappear into them, at least mentally. There was a corpse with memories still attached down there. I— it’s a long story, but,” I frowned. “I guess I sort of became strangely addicted to the process. I picked up many addictive behaviours in the morgue. But anyway, the Undertaker snuck up behind me as I was descending and he startled me, grabbing me and trying to drag me back. We screamed at each other, I fell down the stairs, and I ran from him. I ran towards the memories, grabbed one,” I mimicked the motion, “and blacked out.”  
“That’s what you did back there!” London gasped, hand slapping over their forehead above their widened eyes. “You... processed William’s memory somehow! Or one of them.”  
I nodded despite my unease. Discussing my unnatural abilities near London seemed like dangerous territory. Even Langdon was keeping their mouth shut.   
“So none of us have anything in common with how we got here,” London sighed. “Well shit man! That doesn’t make sense.”  
“As you mentioned, we do all have the mortician in common,” Langdon replied, raspy voice sounding tired. “In some way or another. It must be something to do with him. Not that I’m even blaming him directly, but, clearly something is connected.”   
“Perhaps something to do with the reaper realm?” London muttered, almost to themselves, dark hair falling forward over their shoulder as they watched their feet land one in front of the other. I glanced down at the copper-buckled boots on mine.   
“What is the realm?” Langdon inquired curiously. “Are there many reapers?”  
London pursed their lips. “I honestly am not sure how many there are, but, yes. There’s a sort of pantheon of reapers that exist in a realm outside our own, like a separate bubble of time. The Undertaker and William are two of a trained population.”   
“Lord,” Langdon shook their head, black hair swiping across their eyes. “As if this world needs any more of em.”  
“Guys,” I whispered suddenly, legs freezing in place. “Guys—the edge—the edge of the forest!” I hissed, pointing ahead. The other two were instantly paralyzed alongside me, Langdon’s form tense and London inclining their head with curiosity.   
“Is that... water?” London asked, squinting.   
“Probably a mirage,” I whispered back.   
A strange glassy reflection was visible twenty yards ahead, as the trees thinned and vanished into shadow behind us. “We’re becoming delusional.”  
“A communal delusion?” London challenged. “We’re all seeing this, right?”  
“How about we just go up to it?” Langdon snapped tiredly, knives once again appearing in their hands as they jogged forward. London and I shared a shrug before following. There was nowhere else to go anyway.   
My excitement apprehensively mounted as the water only became clearer, gentle ripples meeting the edge of the forest quite suddenly, with only a meter of strange gritty grey sand between the last trees and the gentle rolling rhythm of the waves.   
“What the bloody hell is that?!” Langdon breathed, staring nervously towards the horizon.   
“Hm,” London chuckled. “I’m assuming you’re referring to the giant flamingo castle?”  
“It’s pink sandstone,” I murmured, gazing in amazement at the massive structure that seemed to be sitting on the surface of the water.   
The castle was as tall as it was sprawling, giant spires of weathered stone and metal stretching up into the ashy sky. Multiple cylindrical towers crowned with empty turrets loomed shadowless above the flat and shiny water. Small windows, black dots in the distance, speckled the sides of the brickwork. Great black vines clung to the stone of the two leftmost towers—from what soil they sprouted, if any, I could not see.   
“It’s huge!” Langdon whistled.   
“It’s pink,” I grimaced.   
“And we’re gonna stop that chain of sentences right there,” London chuckled to themself and raised their eyebrows.   
“Can we drink this?” Langdon asked, crouching in front of the edge of the water.   
“Don’t!” I snapped. “It’s moving like an ocean. It’s probably extremely salty, and if it’s not, it’s probably not clean. Langdon, please, trust me, and resist the temptation,” I urged, wringing my hands. “We should go see if there’s drinking water at the castle first... if that fails, then we’ll try drinking this, okay? We still have a couple hours left in us at least. We can make it.”  
Pouting in frustration, the Brit fell back from their crouched position to sit on the sand. “Fine. How far d’you reckon that thing is?” They asked.   
I twisted my mouth and stared out across the water at the towering castle. “I would guess no more than a kilometre.”  
Both London and Langdon’s voices answered me in unison.   
“What’s a kilometre?”  
I gently lowered my face into my hands and sighed. “Never mind you imbeciles. Now... it looks like we’re going to have to swim.”  
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Langdon’s expression shift to one of pale alarm.   
“Doesn’t look too far, that seems swimmable,” London shrugged, nudging Langdon with their sock. “What about you, Jumpy? You down for a dip?”  
“Um,” Langdon answered, swallowing thickly and staring at the water with apprehension. “I might... I might try and find a way around...”  
I blinked and tilted my head, glancing around. The ocean seemed to extend to the horizon, with no visible land breaks once the forest surrounding us in a wide crescent ended. “That doesn’t seem probable. You can’t swim?”  
Langdon swallowed again and shook their head. “Yeah, uh... I can’t... I can’t swim,” they whispered, pulling their knees up and tucking their chin down. “So you both... you... you might have to leave me here.”  
London and I stared at each other incredulously for a moment before the American spoke.  
“Unacceptable. Not happening my dude, not your choice.”  
Langdon scowled and shut their eyes. “Look, it’s not about choice. The only shot we have at surviving is that castle at this point. I can’t get there. Maybe if you get there, you can come back for me, but I can’t cross the water,” they growled. “I can’t!”   
“We could teach you the basics of swimming before we go, and swim alongside you, all you have to do is kick your legs and Eli and I can drag you through—“  
“You’re not going to be able to get me across there, I’ll be too heavy.”  
“Not if you’re tensing muscles!—“  
While the two of them bickered, I drifted closer to the edge of the water, numbly trying to think of a solution of my own. We couldn’t leave Langdon behind, clearly. The problem wasn’t how to get Langdon across, but more how to convince them that we could manage it.   
Perhaps I ought to test if the water was even a bearable temperature. There was no sun to warm it, after all.  
I crouched and pulled back my sleeve, holding my right hand out for a wave to come swallow. The water heaved gently and rolled up to me, the wave meeting my fingers and pulling back quickly. It was cool, but not even... hmm. Not even as cold as I had expected regular ocean water to be.   
I turned my hand back towards my eyes, frowning at my knuckles. They were dry.   
“How odd,” I murmured softly, the sounds of the other two still yelling at each other behind me covering my speech.  
I stuck my hand out again, stretching it out further with new determination, even shuffling a step closer to the water in my crouch. A shallow wave leapt up and engulfed my arm, shifting the sand under my boots as it pulled back. I tilted my palm up and tried to catch some water.   
Fine grey sand grains poured in streams from between my fingers. My hand and arm were dry.   
I stared out at the gently rolling ocean. Each wave shifted the sand beneath it by leaving more sand, or picking some up, and absorbing it into the glassy surface.   
“It’s glass,” I whispered with awe. I caught another handful. The ocean sprayed up against my face as the wave shattered around my arm, lightly dusting me with more salt-and-pepper sand. “Guys,” I stood, staring down at my small handful of raw glass. The other two ignored me, or didn’t hear me. I looked up at them sharply. “Hey! Dickheads! It’s not water!”  
London’s next retort died in their open mouth as both of them glanced at me.   
Langdon scowled. “What?”  
“It’s a damn good thing you didn’t drink this, Langdon,” I murmured, still a bit too shocked to wrack up much more enthusiasm. I opened my hand and let the sand pour out in front of them. “Because it’s glass.”  
“That’s sand,” London pointed out.   
“Glass is made from refined sand,” I glanced back at the ocean. “It’s... it’s cold, liquid glass, that sprays sand instead of sea foam.”  
London blinked hard and stared for a moment before hesitantly jogging forward to try and catch a fistful of wave, a determined and curious expression on their face. Their jaw dropped when the wave that rose up against their arm seemed to splinter like a thin windowpane and left trails of sand on their palm.   
“What in the absolute fuck,” Langdon finally coughed, watching London with great alarm.   
“That’s why it’s not making much noise. An ocean laps. This is just a vague...”   
“Hiss,” London finished. “The sound of pouring sand.”  
“Is it quicksand?” I wondered aloud. “We might be kind of screwed.”  
Langdon’s bony hands dug into their raven hair as the poor soul’s face twisted in frustrated confusion. “What the bloody hell is quick sand? How many sands are there? Desert sand! Ocean sand! Glass sand! Quick sand!”  
“Quicksand is a very slowly churning pit of sand and loose mud that you get stuck in, and sink and suffocate in,” I explained slowly, eyeing the ocean. The problem was, it didn’t even look like sand. Perhaps it was stable glass, and just more fragile at the edges.   
Langdon groaned sadly and covered their eyes with their hands. “What is my life,” they whispered.   
“Okay,” I murmured, after observing how the strange ocean moved and didn’t move in rhythms for a few minutes. I took a step back from the shoreline. I slid my feet out of my boots quietly and left them on the shore. Loose shoes were going to be a problem. “I have a thought, guys.”  
Langdon cracked open their fingers to glance at me, London following suit over their shoulder from the edge of the ‘water’.   
Before either of them could stop me, I dashed forwards, sprinting into the oncoming lull of sand. Glass shattered against the hem of my robes and against my exposed ankles and feet, but there was only sand where shards would have sliced, spraying up at me. The first few steps at full-tilt were slippery and chaotic as the glass collapsed under my weight. I teetered and slid awkwardly, and as I sank further into the widening ring of broken sand, a few moments of panic overtook me. I was already several meters into the ocean by the time the sand engulfed me up to my shins. I could still lift my feet and place them on the higher surface of the glass in front of me; it was like running up a hill of loose gravel.   
I started to sink lower. My panic rose. The castle was still far away. Every step onto the glass was collapsing—I fell forward onto my hands and knees, loose black robes whipping sand up in impressive arcs above my head in the direction of my momentum. I crawled as fast as I could, hands and knees beginning to be pulled into the cracking ocean further. My breath competed with the slithering sound of the sand around me, and finally, I was hitting what seemed like a ramp of stability—as I army-crawled forwards, the sand fell away beneath me less and less readily, until it felt like compacted dirt, and eventually, I was dragging myself free of any loose grains of sand. Gasping with the effort, I pulled myself onto the smooth surface of vaguely reflective glass, rolling further onto it until I was flat on my back, ecstatic I had survived.   
Carefully, I sat up, and then I slowly stood up onto the unnervingly smooth ocean.   
The sand I had disturbed had already been re-assimilated, the lazily drifting surface having absorbed every grain I had kicked up and stirred.   
I glanced back at my pair of companions on the shore. I laughed loudly and triumphantly, flipping my black sleeves around with joy before jumping confidently in place. The ocean held me. “I did it!” I cheered. “It worked!”  
“That was the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever seen!” Langdon screeched back, both them and London rocking back and forth on the sand with crippling laughter.   
I pouted. “Weren’t you worried I would drown?!”  
“Eli, Eli,” London gasped. “You don’t understand how fucking funny you looked! It looks so ridiculous! Just flailing around, arms and legs everywhere, then you face planted—“  
“I didn’t face plant, jackass!” I wailed. “It was a tactical decision to disperse my weight! Whatever!” I shook my head. “I’m standing on the ocean—you’re standing on Nerd Island over there! Now are you coming, or not? London, I left your shoes on the beach. They’re too loose for me but they’ll prevent you from sinking quite so fast, fractionally.”  
I had made it approximately thirty feet into the ocean. Both of the others looked stronger than me; I prayed their strength propelled them forwards enough that their weight shouldn’t sink them too quickly.   
London, from what I could see, was excited to try, and bounced over to their boots before pulling them on and tightening the buckle. Langdon slowly straightened their legs and dusted themself off, looking resigned as they glanced back at London. Then they held out their hand. Quiet words were exchanged, but I knew what they were doing; two momentums would be more stable in the collapsing environment. If one fell behind, the other could help drag them forward, or at least, towards each other. The horizontal tension between their arms would add to their chances of staying afloat. London cheerily planted their palm in Langdon’s, and the two of them backed up a few steps, counted themselves down, before sprinting as two across the sand.   
They were right— it was hilarious. At first, there was a certain elegance in Langdon’s long and quick strides, and a powerful determination in how well London kept up. Then their feet started to sink, and their hands flailed wildly as though falling off a tightrope as they struggled to continue lifting their feet awkwardly out of the sand. Fifteen feet closer and they were in to their shins, glass shattering around them as they waded forwards as quickly as they could. London began to stumble at twenty feet, and Langdon, with one final pull, dragged London up and forwards, ripping their hand free of their grip as they fell forwards and body-checked London exceptionally hard from behind. I crouched and slid forwards, the sand beginning to collapse around my feet again in a slow gradient as I descended the ramped section of stability I had encountered. I let myself get pulled in up to just above my knees; my feet felt like they were standing on solid glass below. I calmly reached out a hand as a a spluttering and dishevelled London grabbed it, crawling desperately through the slippery grains. I urged them past me and reached out to Langdon. The Brit was just out of my reach, and, to my dismay, was stuck in up to their waist, but sinking no further. Clearly no longer panicked now that everything had stopped moving, Langdon glanced down at their predicament and burst out into raspy laughter. “Dammit! Gah, I’m stuck.”  
“London you’re right,” I snickered. “This is hilarious. Should we throw apples or something?” I taunted, trying to lean further out without getting myself stuck too. Langdon stuck their tongue out and reached for me, but there was still a solid foot gap between our extend arms. “Very funny.”  
“Also terrifying,” London gasped from behind me. “The feeling reminds me too much of earthquakes.”   
“Come on sunshine,” I clicked my tongue. “Come help me make a human rope to reach Langdon. You can stand in the shallow, hold my arm, I’ll go in—“  
Before I could finish, the ocean suddenly absorbed all the loose grains of sand again and solidified in a strange and subtle flicker of reflection around us.   
Langdon tensed and looked down. “Oh... shit,” they breathed, amusement dropping from their face in favour of a speculative frown. They placed their hands down on the glass around them. It was smooth, unbroken. They shifted, but their body strength wasn’t enough to disturb the ocean this deep in.  
“Use a knife,” I suggested. “Stab the surface.”  
Langdon pulled a small blade from their sleeve and began hacking at the shiny glass, but the blade slid off it sideways without causing a dent.   
“You dumbasses, it needs weight to break it,” London sighed, and suddenly they landed next to me, legs plunging into suddenly loose sand as they jumped. They grabbed my wrist and I tried to push forwards through the re-liquified ocean, my weight enough to break the glass as I approached Langdon. In a few quick moments, everything was slippery and chaotic again, but in the sliding sand we managed to pull Langdon free. All three of us crawled and rolled up onto the permanently solid plane of glass, and laid on our backs, staring up at the grey clouds and breathing heavily.   
Langdon was on their feet first. “Now that I am not surrounded by it,” they muttered, shaking more sand out of their hair and glancing down at me. “I think I should like to find some water, hmm? Let’s keep moving, before we all perish.”   
I coughed and glared back up in return. “My death had better be cooler than suffocating in sand,” I snapped. I lifted my arms, clenching and unclenching my fingers in a useless grasping motion. “Help meeeeee,” I whined.   
Langdon sighed and grabbed my hands, hauling me to my feet.  
I stabilized and brushed myself off. London glanced at the both of us from their back on the glass, watching me with mild amusement. Then they switched their gaze to Langdon, who was standing with their hands on their hips. London raised their arms and made graspy fingers as well. “Help meeeeeee!”  
Langdon sighed irritably and dragged London to standing. “Useless, the both of you. Come on.”   
They started across the glass, heading towards the offensively pastel bubble-gum castle, with London and I snickering and trailing behind, exhausted.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m a big fan of this chapter and the next; I had google read them back to me, so I should have less random autocorrect typos, but overall I think they’re well-balanced regarding tension, comedy, and plot progression, so lemme know what you think! Also, AO3 is doing maintenance—this is the first chapter I have posted in the timeframe of maintenance, just in case that information makes life easier for anyone. Enjoy!

“Tell me why you asked about the Undertaker,” William demanded, tone polite but firm as he eyed the glass that filled with a fourth serving of wine, which he touched none of.  
The creature, Myrverth, paused with a tight smile for a moment before heaving a dramatic sigh, small black tendrils of smoke billowing outwards from underneath it. Leaning it’s arms forwards on the table, greenish skin illuminated by bright and copious candlelight, it tilted its head and seemed saddened.  
“The Undertaker and I were good good friends, a while back,” it mused softly. “A very long while back. But I haven’t heard from him for a few centuries now. I was merely curious as to whether or not you knew of his whereabouts, or, his general well-being; life choices, milestones, any of that,” the thing smiled reassuringly, bright amber eyes sliding shut. “But I understand if you are not comfortable discussing another’s business without that person present.” Myrverth slid back into its seat, arms resting wearily on the armrests of the chair.  
William felt a pang of...sympathy. The mortician had left a lot of people behind.  
“How did you meet him?” He asked softly, relaxing back in his chair as well.  
Myrverth perked up a little. “Oh, we met when he was just starting to get famous with the reapers,” it giggled childishly. “I was just in the area when he was on an active dispatch unit and came to collect.”  
When no further story was provided, William pried. “In London?”  
The creature nodded. “Yes, yes, in London,” it hummed. “The death of a young woman from freezing to death. There was snow on the ground, that’s all I really remember... my goodness, it was so long ago...”  
“It must have been, if you met while he was active,” William agreed, reaching past the glass of wine for water.  
Myrverth glanced at him sharply. “I cannot ask you any questions, William, as by my oath. But please, indulge my timeline, at least.”  
Raising his eyebrows briefly over the rim of his cup, William nodded in understanding. “It’s been nearly a century in it of itself since he deserted.”  
There was a temporary silence in which Myrverth’s eyes were locked on the table in what seemed to be a stunned daze. “I... did not know he deserted,” it admitted finally. “In fact, William, I only have just learned that he is no longer considered a member of dispatch from your comments earlier this night. Your statement that there are people who wish to bring him great harm-- to an extent that you are suspicious of strangers as a first response--has me worried,” Myrverth muttered, seeming to fade back into its own thoughts.  
William sighed, feeling conflicted.  
“Many reapers...” he began hesitantly. “Don’t like the fact that he deserted. Nor do they particularly like the reason why, although, I do not know any details,” he shook his head. “I am sorry. I wish I had more positive news to tell you about him. He has made some serious mistakes in the last century.”  
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Myrverth murmured. The wine in its glass slowly dissipated, vanishing to be replaced by what looked like some sort of thick orange fruit juice. “I am surprised to hear that he turned his back on the reaper realm, and vice-versa. I always thought he was a rather pinnacle member.”  
“He was,” William agreed solemnly, adjusting his glasses once again. “He has since distracted himself with what some would consider... frivolous emotional matters.”  
Myrverth’s unnervingly giant eyes narrowed. “It sounds to me as though you’re implying he has had a mental breakdown,” it murmured carefully.  
William shrugged. “That is not my judgement to make. I disapprove of what he has pursued.”  
“You consider yourself an enemy of the Undertaker.”  
“I--“ William faltered, suddenly feeling overburdened by the calm but heavy accusation. “--I do not know what I consider myself regarding him. I prefer to keep my interactions mostly neutral. I care not of what he does until it interferes with dispatch. I would prefer to drop this line of conversation in favour of asking where I am and why I am here,” he added quickly, before Myrverth could prompt forth any more information.  
Nodding slowly, Myrverth sighed again, more little black tendrils of strange smoke puffing around them. “You understand how the reaper realm exists outside of the mortal world, I assume. This world you occupy currently is much like that. I have created a bubble,” Myrverth elaborated, greenish hand cupping the air as though holding a small globe. “And pulled you into it. You spent some time outside. I assume you noticed that the ocean does not move. I merely miscalculated the composition of the molecules somehow, though, I’m not exactly sure what I did,” it admitted. “...but I made a hasty copy of the most basic aspects of the mortal world and threw it all into a ball.”  
Brow creased, William took a moment to think before responding to the creature’s pause. “And where is the ball?”  
“The ball is in my library,” Myrverth answered calmly. “I have access to a...library of time. I suppose-- hmm. I am trying to think of a way to explain it to you, William, in a way you will understand.”  
“I should be perfectly capable of comprehending technical terminology,” William answered, slightly miffed, but mostly still curious.  
Myrverth gave him an amused look. “The library is my personal visualization of the plane on which the energy of reapers and mortals intertwines. Please tell me if you would prefer a more comparable and succinct definition.”  
Blinking, William nodded. “Alright. I think I understand what you mean, but... please explain further.”  
“You have a library of souls at dispatch,” Myrverth continued. “In fact, you have two. One of them hosts the souls of mortals that have been reaped, and the other hosts the souls of mortals who effectively reaped themselves--suicides. Reaper souls,” it raised an eyebrow. “Those shelves do not have a back. The dome that hosts reaper souls opens up into a timeless vortex of space; a type of purgatory to which the reaper souls are tied. Their energy feeds through the blank darkness-- where it goes when it penetrates that black layer, I do not know.”  
“No one knows that,” William whispered, mostly to himself. “It is the curtain, the veil of death that keeps us separate.”  
“Indeed. No reaper has ever gone past the veil,” Myrverth agreed. “You all built shelves up against it for ease of storage. The library in which you all store mortal souls connects to the same veil.”  
Myrverth paused and looked at William expectantly.  
He leaned forwards and cleared his throat. “We assume it is the same veil,” he conceded hesitantly.  
“You assume correctly. The difference is that reaper souls penetrate through, as if it is a two-dimensional and flat curtain, and your energy continues to the other side. Mortal souls are absorbed into the veil itself, where they are stored in a great tangling web of energy--at least, I envision it as a web, or river, of energy-- souls flying past in all directions. Threads of light around me in the library.”  
“You’re behind the curtain?!” William demanded, eyes wide and a strange tingling sensation-- some mixture of fear and awe-- running up his spine. “You’re behind--you’re--are you--what are you?!”  
“I do not exist behind the curtain,” Myrverth raised its hands quickly, black wisps flicking up around its palms. It eyed William warily. “I exist inside the curtain itself.”  
The dark reaper was silent for a long moment. He began to glance around with wide, stunned eyes. “Are we... in the curtain?” He whispered.  
Mouth pulled into a hesitant line, Myrverth nodded slowly. “You currently exist within the curtain-- in a bubble, in the curtain.”  
“In a bubble in the curtain,” Will whispered to himself. “I... I’m amazed that I am still conscious,” he rasped a quick laugh and kept staring around himself. Then he glanced down at his hands. “Am I dead?” He asked bluntly. “How did I get here?”  
“I pulled you in from the mortal realm,” Myrverth answered. “I cannot reach past the curtain into the reaper realm-- but I can do so to the mortal realm.”  
“Wait, so--reaper souls go through--but you cannot access... them, because you cannot access the reaper realm,” William tried to keep up, drawing nonsensical lines of connection on the table with his finger as he tried to recap. “But you can access the mortal world. Twisting threads of light-- you can access mortal souls?”  
Myrverth nodded. “...but those connect to the reaper realm,” William argued.  
“Not once they are stored in the library,” Myrverth smiled softly. “Hence why reapers cannot bring mortals back from the dead at will. The perished souls come to me.”  
“What do you do with them?”“I look, mostly,” Myrverth shrugged.  
William took a deep breath in--something he almost never did-- and rubbed his temples. Pulling his glasses off his face, he grit his teeth for a minute as he processed the information.  
“This may seem like a stupid question, and it feels foolish in my mind--“ he began, glancing up to glare challengingly at the small and strange green thing sitting across the table from him. “--but are you a god? Or The God?”  
Myrverth chuckled kindly. “I am too weak to be a god, William, at least not by your definition.”  
“You literally made a world,” William pointed out, gesturing vaguely at their surroundings.  
Myrverth tensed strangely, seeming suddenly uncomfortable. The expression of--was that--was that sudden anger William saw?--was fleeting, and vanished immediately after as Myrverth relaxed again. “My, you get star-struck fairly easily,” Myrverth observed with another amused grin, making William blush. “...I am not a god William,” it continued through a secretly tight smile. “And that is merely the truth of the matter.”

“This makes me extremely uncomfortable,” Langdon whispered harshly, pulling me out of my thoughts. The three of us had been walking across the glass ocean in silence. We were slow. All of us were tired-- at least, I assumed that everyone was as tired as I was, all of us burdened by insatiable thirst. Hunger was secondary... especially for me. I wondered idly how much worse it was for the other two. They had been here longer, it seemed, by at least a day, and I assumed that both of them were still...  
What, still human? Was I... was I not human as well?  
I settled for ‘alive’ in my head. They were still alive. That was the only difference between me and them-- they were alive. That was all.  
Trivial. I hoped. I hadn’t really encountered a situation that prompted me to compare myself to the average person. In the presence of the Undertaker, I was always normal, and extraordinarily human by contrast. I was suddenly different. I didn’t know how much the other two knew, either. Having ‘woken up’ last, I felt at a severe disadvantage.  
My fingers drifted to my abdomen. Had Eli noticed I had no pulse?  
The stabbing felt fresh in my mind, as well. Within hours I had been impaled and then attacked a second time by William, or... something like him. This existence hardly felt real. Maybe I was dissociating.  
The Undertaker... it had only been a few days maybe since I had last seen him, but... I had been so distant in the week before. We had hardly spoken. I missed him. It was a physical sensation, a deep yearning in my chest. I wished so badly to see him again.  
I hadn’t hardly begun to process Eli’s words to me earlier... they had ‘come after’... how... how long had I been--  
“Hmm?” I asked, glancing up sharply.  
“It just doesn’t feel right,” Langdon cringed, glancing down at their scuffed black boots. “I feel like I’m going to fall through.”  
“It’s not great,” Eli agreed, although they had seemed to adjust to the glass surface quickly, bare feet padding across it nearly silently with a normal gait. Langdon’s steps seemed more unsteady. My own walk felt normal to me--the surface was only slightly slippery beneath my own smooth Victorian soles. I had chosen to not pay attention. If I slid and fell, I really just... wasn’t worried. I had more pressing thoughts to deal with.  
No one seemed to have anything else to add. All of the same complaints pervaded all of our minds. Thirst, fatigue, hunger, soreness. I was probably the most confused. Mostly, admittedly, because I was the only one who had any spare energy to devote to being confused.  
The odd pink castle continued to creep closer. I wondered what we would find. Maybe it was empty, and we were all doomed to just die of dehydration. Maybe it was the epicentre of the population and some strange siege had occurred. Maybe there were ghosts and monsters. Whatever kind of ridiculous fantastical theories my brain could come up with all seemed remarkably logical when faced with what had already happened. An ocean of glass, a forest of shadows, a city of stone, black goddamn goo everywhere--  
“Hey guys,” I paused. “Look! There’s no goo on the ocean,” I pointed out.  
Langdon glanced around, nodding in agreement. “Hardly a particularly amazing property, but it is a bit odd,” they rasped.  
Eli frowned as well, staring intently down at the surface. “I bet it’s underneath.”  
“Why?” I asked. “If my theory is correct, in that the goo is just... stuff that didn’t quite work, somehow, then there’s probably creatures or things in the ocean-- garbage, anything-- that doesn’t really serve a purpose and thus, melted into goo,” Eli shrugged. “But that’s completely hypothetical. I’ve no idea.”  
“Let us consider ourselves lucky that the entire sea is not goo, and pray it stays that way,” Langdon growled, trudging on and burying their hands in the pockets of their robes.  
Eli and I glanced at each other. Both of us suddenly shared the unease that was originally only Langdon’s, and began to hurry across the glass. All of us picked up our pace slightly.  
“I’m really not liking the silence,” I launched vague conversation again in my effort to stay out of my own head. I didn’t want to think about the Undertaker any more. It made me too sad.  
“I don’t think any of us do,” Eli replied mildly. “But it certainly suggests that the three of us were selected for a particular reason. This place is unnatural. Hopefully we are not the only life.”  
“We heard those strange sounds in the forest. Something must be out there,” Langdon murmured, eyeing the distant trees.  
We all fell into another uncomfortable silence for a while.  
I found myself obsessing strangely over the differences between myself and the other two. No heartbeat. No moving blood. Technically I didn’t need to breathe. I thought of the Undertaker again, but strangely, that only added to my visceral unease. I wasn’t even the same as him... he had a specific faction, a population, to which he naturally belonged, whether he chose to reject it or not. I was somewhere between, rejected everywhere.  
The other two hadn’t rejected me, I thought suddenly. What was going on? Why was I spiralling down into these awful thoughts?  
But it was true, at the same time. Perhaps they only refrained from forcing me out of the group because they didn’t know. Or... were they just... watching me, like an experiment, some form of... tortured entertainment?  
I glanced at Langdon out of the corner of my eye. Was it funny, for them, to watch me flinch when they put a knife to my throat, knowing I had already died? Knowing that they would draw no fresh blood no matter how deeply they cut? I couldn’t die. Maybe this gave me some strange power over the others... or was it the other way around? Eli was coming up with ideas constantly, giving us direction. Langdon was the poster-child of survival and protection, and here I was--nothing. Even with my immortality. I was lesser. Given a gift, but still not good enough. Pitiful. They were laughing at me.  
Or was I being irrational? Where was the truth? How was I meant to know?  
Imposter. That was how I felt. That was the word I wanted. Imposter. Fake. They knew... of course they knew... I wasn’t one of them. I was... a mockery, a shadow, a gross misinterpretation of what being one of them meant. Ghost even felt appropriate. Liar. And I would always be that... no matter how hard I tried, no matter how gifted I was, however special, I would never match, never be good enough, because I wasn’t the same. They didn’t want me. I needed to leave. I needed to get away.  
I heard a vague whisper, and thought one of the others said something.  
Eli glanced expectantly at Langdon and I, and Langdon, looking almost offended, glared at me and and Eli in turn. I was expecting to see the other two whispering. We all seemed confused. All of us stopped walking.  
“...anyone else hear that?” Eli murmured in a hushed voice. “Or am I going insane?”  
“I thought one of you said something,” Langdon whispered back sharply.  
“I heard it,” I added, scanning the grey environment around us.  
“Back-to-back,” Langdon ordered, and after a brief moment of confusion, Eli and I spun to put our backs to Langdon’s. Each of us stared out at our surroundings. Langdon’s knives appeared from within their pockets. I felt ridiculously unarmed, and my hands hovered awkwardly at my sides as I looked around. I glanced up as well, scanning the skies.  
Nothing seemed to be there. Nothing was new. Nothing moved, nothing appeared.  
“I feel better,” I noted aloud idly, mostly to myself.  
“Shit, me too,” Eli broke form and shook their head, putting their palm over their eyes and crouching for a second. “I didn’t even--I don’t even know what I was feeling. What the hell just happened?”  
Langdon remained silent, eyes vigilant even as their posture relaxed slightly.  
After a few more moments of scanning the tree-line, they huffed a frustrated breath.  
“This place is messing with us,” Langdon rasped, beginning to walk again.  
“We’re becoming delusional,” Eli suggested, catching up hurriedly.  
“Communal delusion?” I asked.  
“It’s happened before,” Eli murmured. “Or... something like that. Shared delusions. But... that’s... a pretty weak theory. They’re usually induced by panic, and rumour, and belief.”  
“Not instantaneous,” I summarized. “Gotcha. Well, shit, let’s just keep moving, shall we?”  
Nobody replied. We just kept walking, glancing at each other nervously and looking over our shoulders. The trees stood silently in the distance, a flicker of indicative motion nowhere to be seen.  
It only took us another half hour of walking to reach the edges of the castle. All of us were examining it curiously as we approached, but speaking of any features would only be a waste of air. All of us could clearly see it.  
The castle doors were open. The pink sandstone was immensely stacked in rounded towers, some strangely blackened with what could have been misinterpreted as age. I figured it was probably goo, or something similarly afflicting this strange world. All of the windows were dark. No noise greeted us from within; there was no hint of life.  
“Well, that’s ominous,” I noted, staring into the blackness beyond the looming doorway. It was easily doubly tall as Langdon, and easily wide enough for a car to pass through it.  
“Should we... call out?” Eli whispered.  
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Langdon whispered back. “I think we are better off preserving our element of surprise.”  
With a deep breath, Langdon carefully stepped forwards.  
I followed immediately, trying to walk silently. I didn’t want to risk losing Langdon in the darkness. Eli tailed me, as expected. The cold and dim grey lighting of the outside fell away behind us. The air inside the castle suddenly dropped in temperature.  
“Sorry,” a strange voice suddenly called from the shadows, and candlelight flared up around us. The castle doors swung shut behind us. Eli practically jumped out of their skin and clutched at my arm. “You’re here early.” The voice finished.  
Langdon spun, knives clutched tightly. “I knew it,” they hissed.  
“You knew what?” I whispered, hands wrapping tightly around Eli’s arm out of reflex.  
“It’s the damned demon,” Langdon snapped, holding one arm out in front of Eli and I protectively.  
“It’s not a demon,” Eli replied quietly, still sounding panicked. “It’s--it’s some sort of ghost--“  
“What? Ghost?” I demanded. “I am not a demon, nor a damned ghost,” the voice echoed, and more light bloomed further down the hall from us. There was a set of stairs bedecked by a faded dark red carpet that led up to what looked like some sort of stage. It was low and empty. A chandelier on a long chain hung high above the floor, the tall ceiling hosting it swallowed by shadows. White-ish stone pillars lined the carpeted brick hall in two rows of six, each one supporting a single candle sitting in a metal holder. The hall was, seemingly, otherwise bare, and dark.  
“My apologies,” the strangely echoey voice said again. “I was showing my extra guest to his chambers.” There was a loud sigh from behind the farthest pillar, close to the stage. Langdon tensed as a surprisingly short figure--not as short as Eli, but shorter than a reaper; something like Langdon’s height-- slowly drifted out from the shadows. Its skin was a strange amphibious blue-green, and rolling black smoke swathed its steps. The creature was wearing all black, but I wasn’t sure where its skin ended and where its clothes began. It seemed like the strange smoke at its feet materialized more and more as it went up, like some weird black liquidy dress that eventually solidified into a normal long-sleeve shirt.  
Hands clasped in front of it, the strange thing drifted to a halt on the steps and lowered itself oddly smoothly into a tired sitting position. Lacing its tinted humanoid fingers together, it rested its chin atop them, and stared at the three of us with massive glowing dark-orange eyes, framed by long and tangled black hair that looked... wet.  
“I did not expect all of you to show up so soon--nor did I expect you all to arrive at once.” The thing sighed again. “Luckily for you, I’m amazing,” it chuckled quietly. “And I have all of your rooms ready.”  
“You were expecting us nonetheless,” Langdon growled suspiciously.  
The thing blinked. “Langdon, do you not remember me either?”  
“Wot you mean ‘either’?” Langdon demanded sharply. “And yes, I bloody do. You’re the thing from the fountain.”  
“You failed to mention the thing in the fountain,” I whispered.  
The creature giggled again. “I have certainly been called worse before. I’m sorry that I didn’t have more of an opportunity to introduce myself to you in a calmer manner, Langdon.”  
“How dyou know my name?” They hissed, slate eyes narrowing, before they gestured at the thing with their knife. “And where’s all your arms?”  
“I would show you,” the thing said softly, lifting its hands defensively. “But to be completely honest, I do not have the energy to form them. And I do not want to frighten you; specifically not London.”  
“Wait, why me?” I asked, glancing between Langdon and Eli uncertainly.  
“Your friends have already seen the worst of me,” the creature tilted its head. “I’m afraid when I grabbed you, London, you were facing away from me, and you have no idea who or what I am.”  
“You--brought us here?” I asked. “Who are you? What are you? Is that an offensive question?” I flinched back and bit my nail nervously.  
The creature nodded its head. “I pulled Langdon through a fountain, I pulled Eli through a memory, and I grabbed you and pulled you right through a time vortex itself.”  
“I think I would have preferred a time vortex,” Langdon hissed, knife still raised.  
“It would have killed you,” the thing murmured kindly. “I did the best I could.”  
“Why didn’t it kill London, then?” Eli questioned, displaying a surprisingly low level of fear.  
The thing’s eyes switched from Langdon to me. “That is for London to answer when they feel safe to do so. I’m sure you have many questions,” the creature interrupted as Langdon opened their mouth again. “But I assume you require replenishments of various categories, mm? Drinks, sustenance, sleep, etcetera. Perhaps those should come first.”  
“You got a name?” I asked. The creature smiled again and pushed itself to standing, brushing away a stray tendril of smoke that crept up its body. Then it bowed. “Please call me Myrverth.”  
Myrverth--what an odd name. I had never heard it before.  
“Are you human?” I prodded further, patting Eli’s head idly as the blonde shivered from the cool air.  
Myrverth shook its head. “No, I am not human.”  
“Are you a demon?” Langdon demanded.  
Myrverth laughed, the sound muted and oddly breathy, as though someone synthesized a laugh in reverse. “No, Langdon. I’m not a demon. Nor am I a ghost, Eli,” it inclined its head. “Though I know that is how you see me.”  
“Why did you save--“ Eli glanced guiltily at me. “I mean... why did you pull me from... the mortician’s shop? How did you know I would--“  
“Please,” Myrverth grimaced and put one hand to its temple, holding the other one up to pacify. “I just endured a very long and very tense conversation with a very irritatingly formal reaper. Please, just follow me. You need rest, and I need rest. No harm will come to you. I will answer your complicated questions later.”  
I burst out laughing. “Aw, the poor thing is an introvert. Sorry, am I to guess that you’ve been talking to William? Is he your extra guest?”  
“Indeed,” Myrverth answered, turning away from us and heading back towards the dark corner it came from. It gestured for us to follow. I would have, and was tempted to, but a new nervousness rooted me in place.  
“Uh,” I called unsurely. “William and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms--“  
“I am aware of the situation, London,” the creature called, disappearing into the darkness. “You two will not come into contact without my supervision--as well, he is mellow here. He poses very little risk,” assured the thing.  
Then it was only silence. Langdon slowly brought their knife down, pinching the bridge of their nose. “What the absolute fuck is happening.”  
“You both failed to mention the frog demon,” I scolded lightly, breaking free of Eli.  
“I assumed you’d both think I was insane,” Eli whispered. “I couldn’t have imagined either of you had encountered Myrverth before.”  
“It said you encountered it as a ghost,” Langdon mused, sounding strangely calm. “What did that mean?”  
“I--look, it’s a long story, that I will happily tell when we are settled and safe. Now are we staying or not?”  
Langdon shrugged. “We’ve got nowhere better to go.”  
“Myrverth isn’t exactly the most frightening of demons,” I added.  
“I’m not a demon!” The creature’s voice echoed from far away. “And I have damned good hearing, so be nice!”  
I snorted and covered my mouth.  
“I’m thirsty,” Langdon decided. “I don’t trust the thing, but... it hasn’t killed us yet. I assure you, if you mates saw its arms, you’d know it could kill us if it wanted.”  
I pictured a bunch of blue arms, like some sort of forgotten Aztec god.  
“Sure,” I shrugged. “I’ll just stick with you guys. This place is unnerving, but hell, the whole world is,” I wrapped my arms around myself. “You good Eli?”  
“I just want answers,” Eli shook their head with resignation. “Let’s go see whatever Myrverth’s got going on.”


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First chapter summary; Langdon and London have a therapy session.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When your fanfiction chapter is so gaddamn long that your free minutes on text-to-speech run out before it’s done reading it: {DJ Khaled, suffering from success}  
> This is the second chapter that I’ve posted during scheduled maintenance time on AO3, double check and make sure you’re caught up properly! Enjoy!

The food sitting on a small round wooden table by my chamber door was tempting. I didn’t need it however, and had decided that I wouldn’t taste it until morning. Eli and Langdon were almost certainly going to eat, and they needed it more. If either of them became sick, I wouldn’t have any. I wasn’t sure how my body metabolized toxins or poisons yet. I had drunken the water, however. I figured that any poison would likely have been put in the food, not the drink, since as far as I knew, most of them required a strong taste to mask them. Water had been too instinctually relieving to resist.  
My room was very normal, as far as castle chambers went. It was large, and the walls were a dark grey brick, cushioned and covered with tapestries of large flowers. The ceiling was made of darkly polished wooden slats, from which another chandelier of six candles hung. A candle in a lantern sat on another small wood table next to my bed, which in itself was large and squishy. The quilt on top was dark red, the sheets beneath the same shade of cream as the pillars downstairs. There was a window that looked out over the silent glass ocean. Blackout blinds had been drawn as the sky outside darkened vaguely into twilight. The entire room was warm and wooden, red and dark ochre colour schemes and polishes across dark wooden structures complimenting each other from the bedframe to the wardrobe, which guarded extra sets of clothes. It was a strangely eclectic selection, like Myrverth had pulled options at random from a costume box. There was a dark green wool cloak that was scratchy and thick at one end, and a red satin sleeping gown at the other. The shade and material matched my shirt.  
There was a washroom attached to the bed chamber; clear water ran as long as you pushed a pump first. Our host had apparently pre-filled the large and footed brass bathtubs in each of our washrooms with hot water. I dipped my hand in hesitantly and withdrew it quickly. It was a touch too hot for me still.  
Sleep was extremely tempting, but I knew I ought to bathe first, so I wandered around my room. It was strange to be alone suddenly... everything seemed to have happened too fast. It felt like only hours since I had seen the Undertaker, but the trek across the ocean had seemed to be an eternity.  
Negative thoughts still flooded my mind. Not the same way they had back on the ocean; I felt more in control, but as I pondered them, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with myself.  
The truth was that I felt terrible for what I had shouted at Langdon. In a moment of hurt and panic, I took offence to their words about the mortician, and lashed out in anger. Even then, they hadn’t abandoned me when mere minutes later, the shadow-Will attacked me.  
I really did owe them an apology. I wasn’t going to sleep until I did something to make amends.  
Shaking my head, I planted my feet and heaved a habitual sigh.  
Edging my door open, I peered out into the dark hallway. Langdon’s room was next to mine, with Eli’s further down the hall. The hall itself was long, however, and I could only assume that there was a significant amount of stone between each room for how far apart the doors were.  
Our doors faced a long balcony of sorts, that down at Eli’s end, connected to the long spiral staircase that Myrverth had led us up. The balcony overlooked the dark centre of our tower, which we had not yet seen. It was only blackness past the railing, with a presumably far drop to the stone below.  
The hall was carpeted the same simplistic way as the entrance room, and lined with sparse candles that lended the environment a flickering red glow.  
My door clicked shut behind me quietly.  
Stepping silently in my socks down the carpet, I sidled up to Langdon’s room and knocked softly.  
I waited for a few seconds, sceptical that the Brit would have gone to sleep so quickly, and as I expected, the door swung inwards by an inch a moment later before opening wider. Langdon’s stern face glared out at me as they briefly scanned the hallway, leaning against the doorframe.  
“London,” they murmured softly, sounding a bit surprised. “Very brave of you to come confront me alone in a dark hallway when everyone else has gone to sleep.”  
“You don’t sound particularly upset by it,” I shrugged and smiled uneasily. “I couldn’t sleep.”  
“You haven’t even tried to,” Langdon replied evenly, looking me up and down.  
“That’s not important,” I argued. “And anyway, I doubt Eli’s asleep either.”  
“I also doubt that Eli would hear you scream in this place if I dragged you into this room and shut the door,” Langdon rasped, crossing their arms and letting said door rest against their hip. “So why are you here?”  
“Why haven’t you dragged me into the room and stabbed me then?” I demanded in return, lifting my chin in a mock challenge. “Lemme in.”  
Langdon’s mouth thinned into a firm line as they hooded their eyes and scowled down at me speculatively for a moment, before leaning out of the room and checking down the hallway again. Then they withdrew and pulled the door open further, nodding me into the room.  
I slid through and Langdon closed the door behind me, kicking a candlestick back under the gap between the door and the carpet.  
“Why am I not surprised you have a door jam,” I sighed, leaning back against the wall. I was glad Langdon had admitted me, but had no plan from here.  
“You ought to as well,” Langdon murmured, turning away from me.  
Their room was darker. They had put out half the candles in their overhead chandelier, and their furniture was much less vibrant than mine, nearly polished black. Their quilt was coal-coloured as well.  
“You care for my safety?” I glanced down to my right. It seemed the Brit hadn’t eaten either.  
Langdon yanked open their wardrobe and paused. I suddenly pictured the mortician at his closet-- the two looked much the same in dress and posture. Langdon was less confident, and more careful. In the shadows of the chamber, their black hair blended in with the back of their robes.  
“If I did not care for your safety, London, I would not have responded as I did in the forest,” they said softly.  
“Right, right,” I whispered in apology. I tapped my feet together somewhat awkwardly. “Actually, I’m sort of here about that.”  
Langdon tossed a shapeless black mass from the closet to the bed, followed by a white one. A towel, I recognized.  
“Brilliant,” they replied sarcastically. “I’m glad you come to me with such critical information. Whether you intend to apologize or continue arguing your stance, I’m going to bathe, because I truly am indifferent to your opinion, and I feel disgusting,” Langdon continued. “You’re welcome to come sit in the washroom or come back later and talk me to death. I mean--sleep.”  
“I--“ I blinked. “You want me to watch you bathe?”  
“And you made it weird,” they chuckled, slate eyes flashing in the darkness. “I’m just not halting my plans for you. I’m impatient. I haven’t bathed in days, and being so filthy takes me back to unpleasant memories. You don’t have to watch my every move, but you ought to come sit in the washroom if you intend to discuss anything with me.”  
Before I even answered, Langdon grabbed the towel off the bed, kicked off their boots, and disappeared into the washroom, which was equally as dim as the dark bedroom.  
Still standing with my back against the door, I blinked and shook my head. The oddities of Victorian culture... even after months of exposure, it was still strange to me. I crept across the chamber and stepped into the washroom. There was a bench, or shelf, behind the door. I sat there, next to the folded white towel Langdon had kidnapped, and glanced around myself uneasily. Langdon kicked the thin divider shut, barring the bedchamber from view as they lifted their arms behind their head and pulled their robes off. “I’m impressed. Whatever you have to talk about must be really bothering you--I didn’t expect you to follow.”  
I sucked in a distracted breath as scars were revealed on Langdon's back. There were thin jagged lines, large and long crisscrossing lash marks, short slashes, faint stitch marks, and a prominent dark curve that formed a flattened horizontal crescent across their shoulder blades.  
“Oh god,” I whispered, before I realized what I said.  
Langdon laughed, not turning to look at me, and I glanced away, ashamed.  
“Sorry, I should have warned you,” they rasped. “I thought you would be used to scars.”  
“I--I’m sorry,” I whispered, my face burning with embarrassment. “I’m really sorry.”  
“Do you want to know what they’re from?” Langdon asked, fingers pausing on the waistband of their loose black pants.  
“I--I don’t know,” I stuttered nervously. “I mean, if you want to talk about it--“  
“You’re worried they’re from the Undertaker,” Langdon chuckled again. “Aren’t you.”  
I swallowed nervously and looked away again, fingers clenching and unclenching around the edge of the bench. This was so weird. I shouldn’t have come, I was pushing enough boundaries with my very existence around Langdon. Pushing my luck. “I--look, Langdon, I know he did--“ I swallowed again. “--bad things to y-you. I’m sorry, but I don’t--I don’t have an explanation--“  
“Relax,” Langdon scolded, turning around to face me and leaning back against the sink. I briefly glimpsed more scars across their front before I forced my eyes to the shadowy floor. “The Undertaker didn’t do most of what you just saw. See any small white dots along any of the larger scars?”  
I nodded, nervous for what I would hear.  
“Those are stitching marks,” Langdon continued. “From the mortician stitching those wounds.”  
“But did he cause them?” I whispered. I suddenly had to suppress the urge to cry.  
“No,” Langdon replied softly. “I did, by the life I led.”  
I glanced back up, finally meeting Langdon’s iron-grey eyes. Their expression was relaxed, if such a stern combination of features could ever portray ease and comfort.  
They raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to know what happened? People are generally curious about scars.”  
“What’s the crescent one?” I whispered, indulging in my curiosity.  
“Carriage wheel track,” Langdon grinned. “That’s the one that usually catches people’s attention.”  
It was my turn to cock an eyebrow. “Are you shirtless often?”  
“Did you just imply something about me?” Langdon returned evenly, a vaguely amused grin spreading across their lips.  
“No,” I answered smoothly. “Why, are you hiding something?”  
“I hide many things,” Langdon replied, uncrossing their arms and pulling a knife from underneath their bicep before placing it on the edge of the sink. “You seem more at ease now.”  
I watched their hand fall to their side, eyeing their pocket warily. “Somehow I don’t feel more at ease, with the fact that you just pulled a knife out of the air.”  
“You’re wondering if I have another one in my pocket?” Langdon asked. Their pale fingers dipped into the black fabric and produced another small blade. “Surely you should know the answer.”  
My vision was suddenly attracted to an oddly shaped scar that was just peeking over their waistband. It looked like... words. The tops of letters.  
“What’s that?” I asked, tilting my head. Inquiring about scars still felt wrong. I didn’t even know what caused the Undertaker’s, but, Langdon had invited the questioning. I wasn’t worried about being killed or attacked, really, I just didn’t want to upset Langdon for the sake of my own emotional peace.  
“Which?” Langdon followed my gaze down to their hip. A hand fell over it to cover the scar momentarily. “Oh, that,” Langdon murmured hesitantly.  
“Sorry, you don’t have to tell me,” I amended, averting my gaze.  
“No, it’s... it’s fine,” Langdon replied quietly. “Here, look.”  
They pulled the hem of their pants down slightly to expose their hip. Two dark words were slashed into their skin.

VITAE MORTEM

“Oh, my god,” I stammered, eyes widening. I suddenly felt like I had been hit with a brick. “Oh my god. Oh, my god,” I gasped, hands desperately clutching the edge of the bench as I stared at Langdon in fear. “Oh my god. Langdon,” I whispered, feeling faint. “I knew I’d heard that name! Y-you--“ I slid backwards along the bench, haphazardly pushing myself back into the shadows of the washroom, terrified. Words wouldn’t come. Thoughts wouldn’t work. I stared at the tall and scarred body in front of me with new light. The doctor’s steely eyes met mine impassively in the dim candlelight, hands still paused on their waistband as they watched my reaction.  
I slid awkwardly off the bench and backed myself into the dark corner of the small stone room, hands out to stabilize myself against the frigid walls. “Y-y-you--you’re a--you’re the--you’re--“  
“You can do it,” Langdon rasped calmly, icy expression remaining neutral. “Come on. Say it.”  
“You’re a murderer,” I breathed.  
Langdon let the silence hang for a moment before tilting their head. “How does that feel to say?” They murmured.  
“You’re the doctor of Death,” I whispered, tears now uncontrollably springing to my eyes.  
Langdon dipped their head back and forth contemplatively. “Bit dramatic, but sure.”  
Adrenaline was making my knees shake. I felt like I was locked in a room with Ted Bundy. I was facing a serial killer, someone so evil that even the mortician spoke their name with unease. Death itself feared Langdon, somehow.  
“I’m gonna pass out,” I whispered.  
Langdon clicked their tongue. “Oh, don’t do that,” they murmured dangerously. “That would make you remarkably vulnerable. Here, want a knife? Would that make you feel better?” Langdon grabbed a dagger in a sheath that was sitting on the sink counter, tossing it lightly at me. Despite everything, I cowered away and flinched when it bounced harmlessly off of my shoulder. A single tear rolled down my cheek and I wiped it away hurriedly.  
“Crying now, hmm?” Langdon arched both eyebrows. “I’m afraid that does nothing against this Very Evil scorch mark of a street rat,” they chuckled to themself.  
“He w-warned me about you,” I whispered.  
Langdon’s gaze narrowed, mouth twitching downwards in distaste before they sighed. “And what did he say?”  
“You killed people,” I whispered. “You’re a serial killer--“  
“First correction. I’m an interrogator,” Langdon listed on their index finger. “And second, I haven’t killed anyone for over a decade. I was young and... foolish.”  
“Childish foolery results in broken vases,” I hissed. “Not spilled blood!”  
“Not all of us are so lucky to be breaking mommy’s vases!” Langdon snapped in response, before quieting again. “Some of us have harder lives, London. You have no idea what I’ve been through. Do you think that I wanted to be murdering people when I was nine?” Langdon spread their arms. “The fact is, if I were a murderer, I would have let you die a thousand times by now. Such horrible tendencies are in my past.”  
“Your past matters,” I whispered.  
“Then will you go back to the mortician knowing that he is the one who carved these words into me?” Langdon asked curiously, tilting their head and pulling black hair out of their face. “That he’s the one who dragged the knife across my eye? Or that he’s the one who left these lines on my palm? Or that he’s the one who stabbed my midsection? That he’s the reason these two fingers of mine are crooked? That he’s the reason I have a fear of--“ Langdon cut themselves off, eyes going wide as they coughed awkwardly into their arm. Glancing at me unsurely, they added, “well that doesn’t matter. Will you?”  
I faltered, heart dropping lower and lower with every aged wound Langdon indicated.  
“I... people aren’t... just... he also stitched your wounds,” I argued weakly.  
“I also saved my children,” Langdon murmured. “I have an adoptive family of five to fifteen children that I clothe and feed at any given time.”  
I took a steadying breath and shook my head. This was a fucking nightmare. But... my panic was fading. The mortician had warned me about Langdon, about Doctor Mortem, but, so much of my life had been flipped in the last two days. I had known the Undertaker for months, and Langdon only for hours. But, they weren’t attacking me. Nor had they attacked Eli. In fact, quite the opposite.  
“London,” Langdon whispered, clearly sensing my debate. “I caught you when you jumped off a roof. I--I fought a shadow reaper for you, I--“ their voice faltered and they glanced away for a moment before their harsh expression returned. “That can’t count for nothing. ...can it?”  
I bent and lifted the knife up off the floor, flipping it in my hands with a grimace. “He said...” I muttered slowly. “He said that he hurt you. But I don’t understand why you fixate on him so specifically,” I whispered. “The scars on your back are worse than the ones he caused you. Don’t you... don’t you have bigger fish to fry?” I slowly held the sheathed knife out, taking a single step forwards. “Don’t you have more important people to hate? I feel like...” I trailed off as Langdon carefully took the knife from me, and they paused, glancing down at it before looking back up at me expectantly.  
“...I feel like you’re hiding something from me, and I want to understand what happened,” I finished, losing my breath as I spoke. “I--I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable to talk about-- and you don’t have to-- but, I can’t help the fact that I want to know.”  
I clasped my hands behind my back and stared at the floor anxiously, black stockings nearly disappearing into the shadows.  
Langdon watched me carefully for a few silent moments before setting the knife down on the sink’s edge again. I glanced up for a fraction of a second before staring at my feet once more. This all felt so terribly awkward.  
“London,” Langdon began. “If you actually want to understand, then I need you to assure me that your faith in me trumps my reputation and any rumours you have heard about me. Your fear will be necessary,” Langdon continued calmly. “But you will have to trust in me that I know what I’m doing, and that I’m not... just trying to hurt you.”  
I shrank back into the corner, panic flaring again. “W-what? What are you going to do? Are you going to cut me?” My voice rose in pitch.  
“I’m not going to cut you,” Langdon answered evenly, clearly forcing themself to remain as calm as possible. “You clearly already understand what that would be like. Take a moment,” they instructed, gesturing with their palm towards me. “Calm down, figure out if you trust me or not, and figure out if you actually want to know why I... what’s so complicated about the Undertaker. If not, I will do absolutely nothing. I’ll get in the bath,” they gestured slowly to the tub. “And we can calmly discuss whatever it was you came to discuss and forget about everything that just happened,” Langdon murmured, crossing their arms over their pale flesh and leaning back against the wall next to the sink, watching me. “I’ll wait.”  
I nodded and sat uneasily on the bench again, letting my face fall into my hands. I was afraid of... whatever Langdon had planned. The tone of their voice implied that they were going to make me “understand” by force. But... hmm. Trust in them. It would probably be a lesser version of whatever the Undertaker had put them through.  
What could it be? The worst thing I could think of made my skin crawl, but I had to consider the possibility that the mortician had... assaulted Langdon in a particular way. I really really didn’t want to believe that. In fact, I decided, I didn’t believe it at all. So whatever it was, it had to be less traumatizing than rape, objectively. Or less violent, or less something. It was clearly something survivable. So if... if the worst that Langdon could do was pretend to sexually assault me, and my faith in the Undertaker prevented that from being the outcome, then it had to be less bad somehow. I could... I could survive it. I couldn’t think of another option. Maybe Langdon would just beat me up a little bit. I had fallen two stories in a burning building. I could handle whatever pain a mortal could cause, surely.  
Rubbing my eyes, I set my lips in a line. “Fine,” I said firmly. “Show me.”  
Langdon lifted their head tiredly, raven locks parting around their face. “You are certain?” They asked, sounding mildly surprised.  
“I’m sure!” I snapped. Unfolding their arms, they casually stepped further into the room, away from the wall. “Stand up,” they commanded.  
Immediately, I started to regret my decision. My adrenaline spiked again, making me feel a bit sick, but I swallowed my fear as best as I could and slowly rose to my feet.  
“I’m... scared,” I whispered.  
“So was I,” Langdon replied gently. “Look at me. Do you see me? Are you alright?”  
My shoulders were hunched in instinctive cowardice as I stared at their calm visage. Langdon held their hand out. “You’re going to be fine. Put your hand in mine. I’m not going to do anything,” they assured me earnestly. “I promise. I’m not going to take you by surprise.”  
I felt so tense. Every muscle around my stomach and my neck was tight, ready to spring. Studying Langdon’s eyes obsessively, watching with great paranoia for any sign of a lie, I slowly reached my shaking hand out through the darkness. My fingertips ghosted across Langdon’s palm for a moment. The Brit didn’t move, eyes studying me just as intently in return.  
I set my jaw firm and pushed my hand into theirs fully, clasping my fingers around their wrist.  
“Are you ready?” Langdon murmured. I swallowed thickly, mouth quivering nervously when I made to speak.  
I nodded. Langdon’s fingers suddenly grabbed my wrist tightly and yanked me forwards. I shrieked and tried to retract my hand, but of course it was too late. I shouted something along the lines of a terrified apology as Langdon dragged me up against themself. I fought back in a spastic and chaotic way. It was all I could manage in my fear. The room was suddenly too small, and Langdon was much too powerful to have made this deal with. Their other arm wrapped around my waist, pinning me up against their own hips as they twisted my arm up behind my back in a single sudden motion.  
I shrieked again, fear of the unknown and impending punishment nearly making my thoughts incoherent.  
“Langdon please, no!” I gasped. “Please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry--!”  
Wordlessly, Langdon’s arm slid from my waist up to under my throat and tightened as they leaned back. I was staggering and kicking my feet randomly as I strained to pull free. Langdon’s feet were planted wide, weight shifting to counterbalance my efforts. My wailing voice was silenced by pressure as Langdon lifted me so my feet barely met the floor. I clutched and pulled at the arm around my throat with my one free hand, hardly strong enough to make even the slightest difference.  
I felt my centre of gravity shift, like I was being moved, but my mind was too clouded with terror in the darkness to understand what it meant.  
Suddenly my hips met something solid and unmovable. I gasped at the bruising pain, but was immediately distracted by more urgent problems.  
Langdon suddenly flipped the hand on my throat and locked it around my other wrist, dragging it up behind my back to meet the other one. I winced as my shoulders twisted and was about to open my eyes when I felt one hand on the back of my head, and suddenly I was shoved downwards.  
I was plunged into warm water. It wasn’t hot, but the sudden collision still shocked me and I jerked backwards instinctively. Langdon’s fingers dug into my hair tighter, holding me under. I hadn’t taken a breath. My shoulders were hurting.  
I coughed under the water. My chest was already beginning to ache. Then suddenly I was hauled back up. I gasped as my face broke the surface.  
“Oh my g--“ I didn’t have time to finish before Langdon forced me back beneath the water. My knees collapsed under me and Langdon quickly adjusted. Rather than my jaw smashing against the rim of the bath, they pushed me farther forwards so that my hips were still pinned between theirs and the tub.  
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered that I didn’t need to breathe, but the human instinct to consume oxygen was still too strong. I hadn’t practised not breathing. Panic and unfamiliarity still caused my lungs to burn uncomfortably and I thrashed in the water, trying to twist my face to the side for a breath.  
Langdon twined their grip into my hair and pulled it tight, forcing my head still. I screamed under the water. My body took some of it in in a desperate inhale and I began to drown.  
Langdon yanked me back up out of the water. I coughed and gasped, warm water burning in a part of my body it was never meant to enter.  
Langdon pushed me under again. It wasn’t the water that was scaring me--it was how strong Langdon was. How angry their grip felt, how tense the arm behind my head was, how hard they were breathing.  
I wondered if they could stop themself.  
I intentionally let the human, panicked part of my brain take over. Langdon wouldn’t have had the reassurance of granted immortality on their side. I began to panic again.  
I imagined the strong hand in my hair was tipped with black nails. I thought about green eyes hovering behind me, glowing with fierce intensity, trying to hurt me. The hand holding my wrists was gripping me so tightly it hurt--everything hurt. My lungs hurt from suffocating, my eyes stung from crying, my shoulders were burning-- there was no way I could fight my captor off. It was entirely up to them to let me go, to let me breathe, to end the pain, or force it to continue.  
I was pulled up out of the water. I sucked in a desperate breath and kept crying. Langdon’s voice was suddenly soft in my ear. “Say something,” they murmured. “Do you want to keep going?”  
I shook my head and pulled in another shuddering breath. “N-no--!”  
As soon as the word left my mouth, followed by a sob, Langdon shoved me back under.  
Feeling betrayed, I cried harder, hair drifting lazily around my face as I laid motionless in the water.  
An eternity later, Langdon’s hand left my wrists as they lifted me from the bath.  
I wept uncontrollably, coughing as I fell backwards. Langdon fell with me and kept me from hitting the floor. Arms right around my shoulders, they pulled me back and sat me on the bench. Crouching in front of me, they grabbed the towel beside my leg. I flinched as it fell across my shoulders. Taking two corners in their scarred hands, they gently used the towel to smooth my soaked hair back from my face. Urging my hands away, they wiped the towel across my cheeks and then allowed me to hold it over my own eyes as I kept crying. Langdon remained crouched in front of me. I sensed their eyes on me.  
“D-Don’t look at me!” I shrieked.  
Langdon wrapped their arms around my shoulders, dragging me down off the small bench and into their lap. I held the towel firmly over my eyes and sobbed again, coughing and hiccuping occasionally. I felt something rest softly atop my head. Langdon’s chin.  
“Hours,” Langdon murmured softly, one hand raising to idly de-tangle my wet hair. They sounded sad, and distant. “Hours of that, London. I was eleven years old.”  
“I-I’m sorry,” I choked, pressing the towel firmly over my face still. “I--I’m sorry he did that to you.”  
Both of us were silent for a while. I wasn’t sure what to say, and was still recovering from the mildly traumatic event that had just occurred. Eventually, I wiped my eyes, and pushed back against Langdon’s shoulders. “... You’re afraid of water,” I stated nervously. “That’s why you were scared of the ocean. That’s what you were going to say earlier. Isn’t it?”  
Langdon pursed their lips before nodding slowly. Their hands dropped away from around me as they leaned back. “Are you alright?”  
“Are you?” I hiccuped. “How did that feel, reliving your torture from the other perspective? Have you ever done that before?”  
“I--“ Langdon hesitated. “No,” they replied softly after a moment of thought. “I haven’t. You... you trusted me more than I trusted me, London, and that’s the only reason I stopped.”  
“You wanted to keep going,” I whispered meekly.  
Langdon sighed and let their head fall back, clenching their jaw. “Yes. I did.”  
I stared pensively at the floor for a moment. “Thank you for not doing so.”  
Langdon sighed again and pulled away, pushing themself to their feet and offering a hand to help me up. I slid back into my position on the bench, towel still wrapped around my shoulders. I briefly dried my hair and set the cloth aside. “I’ll go get you my towel,” I offered, moving to stand. “We’ll switch.”  
“Though your hospitality and hygienic habits are greatly appreciated, I would much rather you just sit there for a little while,” Langdon waved me back down and slid the rest of their clothes off before carefully descending into the tub of water. Settled, they looked at me again, a strand of black hair sticking lightly to their cheek. “So why did you come here in the first place?”  
Memories of knocking on Langdon’s door seemed an eternity away. “Um... I just wanted to say thanks for saving me from William,” I murmured. “I know you didn’t have to, and you probably didn’t want to, after what I... what I said. And I wanted to extend a formal apology for my comment about your scars, Langdon,” I continued. “No one deserves to be hurt like that, not the Undertaker or you either. And... well, I was wondering if there was anything I could do to make amends.”  
Langdon’s eyebrows lifted slightly. Then they shut their eyes, breathed in deeply and leaned their head back against the edge of the bath. “You’ve done enough.”  
I took Langdon’s words in silence. The panic of the water was fading, and I began to feel uncomfortable in the lingering quiet, feeling foolish for having made such a fuss. But when the water had gone into my windpipe—be it by my own stupidity—my physical instinctual response was to cough, cry, and panic. I had never been particularly good at handling acute stress.  
I mostly now felt conflicted. Langdon, yes, I knew I had known that name from the Undertaker’s time.   
...*”they said they recognized you”*  
Hmm. Eli’s words were causing me some trouble, and I bit my nail contemplatively, dissociating out of the dark washroom and vanishing into my own thoughts. Langdon had said they recognized me. But I had never encountered Doctor Mortem— I had only been told.   
I slapped my hands against my cheeks in frustration. So many weird little memories were hovering just beneath my recollective power. Why was my brain like this?  
The snapping sound startled Langdon, who jerked slightly in the bath. Grey eyes blinked at me from the shadows. “You alright over there, sunshine?”  
I scowled. “I have... a strange memory, Langdon, of you saying you recognize me. Did you ever... stalk me? Were you ever following me to see if you could hurt the Undertaker through me or something?”  
Langdon shook their head. “I swear I never knew you were with the Undertaker until we met properly, London. But...” they sighed. “I thought you might be... one of them. A reaper. They don’t seem to age,” Langdon continued hesitantly. “At least, not from anything I’ve seen, and... I saw someone who looked very much like you, once, London. When I was very little—before I even met the mortician.”  
“How odd,” I mused. “I’m pretty sure I met the mortician after you did. Or well, I must have, since he told me about you.” I scowled again before glancing sideways at Langdon. “I assure you, I’m not a reaper.”  
Langdon’s suspicious eyes narrowed. “I believe you,” they murmured after a moment. “But it’s still... strange. Honestly, the person’s features are burned into my mind, London,” they rasped, tapping their temple. “I do not forget a face. And it looks... exactly like yours.”  
“Were you ever in America?” I inquired. I already knew the answer, but I was subtly trying to uncover whether or not Langdon had done any time-travelling.   
The Brit shook their head and we both fell into brief silence again.  
“What happened when you met this person? What was the situation?”   
Langdon took a long breath in though their nose, shutting their eyes and leaning their head back on the tub. “It was the day I first killed someone,” they whispered. Suddenly their brow knit, like they were in pain, and they swallowed thickly. “Not my proudest day by any means at all. I was... sitting on a curb, alone, and I... the person came up to me and gave me money. They were strange,” Langdon continued, sounding reminiscent. “They spoke in the same accent you do. I assumed they were a tourist, because they didn’t know how much money—“  
“Fucking Christ,” I interrupted, putting my face in my hands. “Langdon, I asked you how much money bread was. And then I gave you some.”  
It was flooding back to me now. The black hair. The eyes flashing with suspicion and caution. The face was small and unmarred.   
A blank canvas, I thought, fists still pressed into my eyes. Waiting for lines to be drawn.   
I felt lightheaded.   
“I knew it was you,” Langdon whispered tensely, after a long minute of silence. They cleared their throat. “Care to explain?”  
I shook my head vehemently. “I have no idea!” I breathed sharply. “I have no idea! Fuck dude, I met you— how old were you?!”  
“Nine,” Langdon whispered back. “Two years before I met the Undertaker.”  
“I had already known him,” I rubbed my temples and stared at the ground, bewildered and concerned. “For months. So I did come first. How did he know?!” I practically shrieked, gesturing wildly at the floor. I groaned and put my face back in my hands.   
“London,” Langdon murmured. I glanced up.   
“What?!”  
Their head was still tilted back. “... Listen. None of this makes any sense, and I am just as confused as you. Please feel free to enlighten me if you suddenly remember critical information, but I have a feeling the answers lie with the mortician himself. But... thank you for showing me kindness that day,” Langdon paused for breath. “I am... glad that I have been somehow given an opportunity to meet you again. I have done evil things in my life,” Langdon sat forwards, rubbing water up onto their face with a tortured expression. “I did terrible things that day. I have never forgotten that goddamned bread,” their voice became a tight whisper and they covered their eyes. “But—I like to think I have done some good things with my existence. I have to believe I have saved children from untimely demises.”  
“Langdon, it’s alright—“  
“You do not understand,” Langdon growled, teeth clenched as they sat hunched in the bath. “I would probably— I would probably have— maybe it would have been better,” they hissed suddenly. “Maybe you did the world a disservice, London. Your kindness left a killer in the world,” they rasped.   
I... didn’t know what to say. I was stunned by the implied admission, and also, shockingly torn in my opinion of it. Technically, Langdon was correct. I had shown kindness to a killer. Was that... wrong? I had shown kindness to a child.   
“Who the hell did you kill?” I whispered, confused.   
“That’s none of your concern,” Langdon growled sharply.   
I fell silent for awhile, pondering the circumstances while Langdon calmed down and eventually leaned back in the bath after splashing their face with more water.   
I chuckled suddenly, and Langdon glared at me. “What?”  
“No offence, sorry,” I snickered, holding up my hands. “I’m terrible at handling serious things. It’s a curse. But... I just realized that you very nearly would have become what you hate most,” I continued. Then my face fell. “Oh. But then... I guess if you had, you wouldn’t have hated it, because you wouldn’t have gone through your trauma.”  
“What the hell are you on about?” Langdon demanded, tilting their head curiously.   
“Reapers,” I said. It was obvious, I thought.   
Langdon raised an eyebrow expectantly. “What about them?”  
“You would have become one?”  
“I *what*?”   
“Unless I’m sorely misinterpreting your words, you mean to say that you were considering killing yourself that day,” I elaborated carefully. “People who commit suicide become reapers. So on one hand, you would have become the thing you now hate—on the other, you would never have endured the torment from the Undertaker,” I shrugged. “It’s just interesting to think about.”  
“Hm,” Langdon grunted, scowling in their own thought. “I did not know that was the... process for becoming a reaper,” they murmured slowly.  
“It’s sad to say,” I thought aloud. “But you probably would have been better off... killing yourself.”  
Langdon took another long deep breath in and shook their head. “That’s alright. I consider the life I led my sentence for my crimes.”  
I fiddled nervously with my fingers. “Dude, that’s... dark,” I said after a moment.   
With a shrug, Langdon opened their mouth, when a strange distant noise interrupted them. Both of us fell silent, frowning at each other in the darkness as we listened. The sound came again. A muted and barely audible voice. Screaming. It was coming from the other side of the wall.   
Sharp grey eyes widened. “Eli,” Langdon hissed, leaping out of the tub and running out into the darkness before I was even on my feet.   
I cursed and grabbed Langdon’s pants from the floor. “Why is life so goddamn stressful!!” I snapped to myself, pealing out of the room after Langdon.  
Eli just kept screaming.


End file.
